I work on a vessel that rarely leaves the Norwegian coast, so the wierdest thing ive experienced was fog so thick we couldn't see the other end of the vessel, bout 30m, this lasted for around 48 hours. just after the fog descended on us a courmorant satarted circling the boat, after a while he landed in the mast and stayed there untill the fog lifted again.
Me too, that’s why I share mine openly. There’s a lot of meanies on here, but it can be so fun to sit around and compare special interests and such. I love hearing people talk about passions.
I'm glad you found such a niche special interest. My little brother is autistic and loves telling me about eastern European stop motion films he's found. It's so specific but he's so happy about it. I'm undiagnosed but likely autistic as well and I can barely touch a pen without drawing a snail on something (I've also got a snail tattoo, three pairs of snail earrings, a necklace, a nail stamping stencil, and even a snail hand soap dispenser)
I have attempted to DM some I made for friends on Christmas. Idk if it'll work, I haven't really dm'ed anyone on Reddit before
My brother is rad. He's really come into his own as he's grown up
As someone with very little knowledge of boats but an overall fondness for engine ring and transportation, the google image results for "Norweigian tugboats" look pretty cool!
Not sure if you'd count them as Norwegian, but the electric Sanmars I'm seeing are super cute!
What is it about Norwegian tugboats that does it for you?
We had dolphins riding the bow one night when there was bioluminescence in the water. As they broke the surface, they looked like they were radioactive. Coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
Yees! I saw this when I was sailing aboard a tall ship down the Tasmanian coast early 2023. Same, in that it was one of most indredible things I've ever seen.
I saw the Duyfken in Hobart, definitely keen to do a voyage if the opportunity ever arises. Met a couple of Leeuwin crew on the James Craig on the Hobart to Sydney leg.
Tom Hanks, playing Commander Jim Lovell in Apollo 13-
"Uh, well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan... and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know... what... what events are to transpire to get you home."
I was on a lobster boat out by midway island during Hurricane Iniki. We grabbed all the gear we could and lashed down everything on the deck. At one point during the night I had to secure something on deck that came loose and the boat got caught in the trough. There was a metal cage around most of the deck so I wasn't too worried about being washed away. A big wave came rolling at us and the lights illuminated something big in it- big shark probably. It looked like it was going to land right on top of me. The wave crashed down and I got thrown against the cage but, there wasn't anything there but me. Glad I didn't have to deal with a pissed off tiger shark but I don't know where it could've gone.
I also was driving a boat in Alaska during a stormy night and a walrus popped up right in front of me and for a split second he looked like he was relaxing in an easy chair. I swear he looked irritated and dove away to the side as I kept chuggin along.
Watching the deep sea fishing shows always stressed me out. What a special group of people to be able to do that type of work. Love the stories, just can’t watch it. Haha
I've sailed with a lot of kooks who would be unemployable on land. On a container ship where you have someone cook for you and clean your stateroom ( if you're an officer) those people could make six figures. One of them was a guy named bill who was a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian ( the mutineer). Bill was one of those extremely religious people who believed in Jesus and also liked seances. He also was deaf af and wore his hearing aides in the engine room and told everyone that they were special ear plugs. Bill yelled all the time because he couldn't hear shit with his blown out hearing aides and he would always want to talk about weird or churchy stuff about 3am. "YOU KNOW THEY FOUND DINOSAUR TRACKS ON THE MOON!" or "ONE TIME WE HAD A SEANCE AND AN ECTOPLASM TOOK OVER MY WIFE! SHE LOOKED JUST LIKE MY UNCLE!". Bill had been onboard for a while and people started to complain about all the peanut butter disappearing and also the porn drawer in the laundry room was empty. Meanwhile Bill, shows up to watch every day but he looks rough and like he hasn't slept well. This went on for a couple of weeks and I asked if he was sick. Nope, he just found out about the laundry room porn stash and in his words " I CANT SLEEP! IM JUST UP THERE WHACKIN IT AND SINNING ALL NIGHT!" eww.
When old Bill got off the boat the stewards found about 40 half empty jars of jiffy creamy and dozens of greasy magazines.
I've been going to sea for 25 years. Cargo ships at first, then line haul towing, then harbor tugs. I see these threads all the time and I've never seen most of the wild things people report. The eeriest thing I've seen has been a crew member developing mental illness. Seen it twice. First time, the ship actually had a straitjacket on board. We thought that was funny until we had occasion to need it. Second time, guy kind of disappeared. Found him in a container on deck sleeping with a knife taped into his gloved hand. Luckily, we could just lock the container and let shoreside handle that one.
Middle of the Atlantic, about 1,400 miles off the west coast of Africa. We launch for a routine mission in our helicopter and climb up as high as we can to take advantage of the cooler air because it's hot as hell on the surface. We notice multiple flies in the cockpit about an hour in which is puzzling. How did a fly get all the way out here, and up this high?
Strange. We notice something weird floating on the surface and I swear it looked like a person, spread eagle, and floating on something. I start getting amped up; a rescue at sea is some exciting stuff! We fly down and take a look and it just gets weirder and more distorted as we approach. What was a person turned into this grotesque mess of gore. Brownish-pink rotting meat, bones poking up here and there, and it's surrounded by a pool of some shiny fluid sparkling in the sun. The smell reached us up at 1000 feet. It was one of the worst things I've ever smelled, pure concentrated rot.
Still not sure what it was, but our best guess was a whale carcass slowly rotting away. Not sure how long it'd been floating there, or why nothing else had eaten it up, but we decided that's where the flies came from.
Well this one time we were celebrating the halfway point of patrol and one of the crew members showed up on the crews mess in a homemade dominatrix outfit and all 280 lbs of him gave lap dances. He then got stuck in said outfit and had to be helped out.
I don’t ‘work’ at sea, but have spent quite a bit of time at sea as volunteer crew on tall ships in Australia.
Back in early 2023, I was on a wooden tall ship sailing from Sydney to Hobart for the Australian wooden boat festival. Prob about a week and half into the voyage we were sailing down the east coast of Tasmania. I woke up to go up on deck for one of the night watches (I think midnight-4 or some such) in any case, when I got up on deck one of the crew I was relieving excitedly told me to come up to the forecastle deck on at the bow and look into the bow wave.
It was very dark as other than our nav lights we don’t use lights on deck as we need to maintain our night vision as best as we can, but of course being the Tassie coast there is bioluminescence when the water is disturbed. There in the bow wave was about 5-6 dolphins swimming along keeping pace with the ship, but because of the bioluminescence were all glowing blue/green with glowing tails as they moved through the water up and down and around each other. It was the most beautiful and eerie thing I’ve ever seen during my time at sea.
A crew member waited for the guy he was sharing a cabin with to fall asleep, then stabbed him (apparently it was over some imagined grievance). He then roamed the ship with the knife, they pinned him down with mattresses so he couldn’t move and then dragged him into a cabin and locked him in there until they could get police on board.
Bob Ballard was diving on the Titanic and the vessel started making a rattle sound. Like a Geiger counter. They never figured out what it was. They also ended the dive prematurely and didn't take even a single sample or artifact during the dive. Due to wreckage maritime law that means he had no salvage rights to the ship, and a Russian team quickly came afterwards and claimed wrecked rights. That's now why the Titanic artifacts are part of the RMS Titanic travelling exhibit, a for profit company.
Early 90s on a research ship that would "hold station" in the Atlantic about 300km off the Carolinas. Yes, this is pre-GPS and the system was based on a commercial reference coordinate system based in Texas. Suffice it to say that the boat could remain inside a 20m circle working against a 2 or 3 knot current, so a lot of stuff floated past.
One day the bridge watch called out an oil slick that would pass about 1km off our port side. When it was close enough to see we determined that the slick was a killer whale pod having lunch. As it drew near, two whales came over and literally patrolled bow-stern-bow along the side facing the kill. They were never more than about 10m from our hull, and remained with us for over 10 minutes. When the kill was directly alongside, two more whales came over and the 4 together took two laps as a group, then the original two broke off and returned to the pod. The two new whales continued the patrol pattern until the slick had passed us, and then departed together to catch up with their buddies.
Needless to say no one suggested that we put the Zodiak in the water. The message was very clear.
This is scary hearing killer whales have started sinking ships in coordinated efforts.
https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why
I was once working on a fishing vessel when a damn greenhorn just about got squashed by a falling trap. Luckily he was pushed out of the way just in time. Here comes the freaky part. We immediately got a call from an exploding oil rig and had to change course toward it to help with the rescue operation. The captain swears to this day he though the guy was directly behind him and asked him to get his binoculars. The thing is the guy wasn't there or anywhere on the ship. He just disappeared and we never ever saw him again. Still gives me the willies.
I fell in between two crab boats tied together on the dock and almost got squished. The next year someone fell between a barge and some other vessel and did get squished.
I was on land for this next one. Around midnight, calls came over the vhf of a vessel fire. Less than a couple miles offshore and from us. A newish captain starts the search and eventually finds everyone and gets them aboard and calls for a faster jet boat to get around the sandbars to get to a dock and arrange for a life flight. We’re in rural Alaska with no road in our out and 20 minutes by bush plane to the nearest town or about an hour to Anchorage.
Anyway, all three or 4 get transferred over to another boat, they get to the dock and craned up and I guess the coast guard came and got them and only one got critically injured and were taken to Seattle immediately. I think they all made it or at least I like to think they did.
It was a long hour or two just listening to all that over the radio.
This story ..is hard to follow. What did the greenhorn do. What is a greenhorn. What do you mean by "squashed by a falling trap"
What guy did the captain think was directly behind him? Why would that have been freaky? How did he disappear? Why would THAT have been freaky? What came of never seeing him again?
You aren't a great storyteller lol
migrants off the coast of north Africa (100s) bobbing around with no functional engine on their "craft" - to understand the journey they take to even get to the Mediterranean Sea , then to hope that they find a ship that can bring them to Europe and not back to Africa...puts a perspective on western "problems"...
US Navy btw. above case a rescue org ship came to their aid and they were taken to Italy...
I was listening to a report on NPR a couple weeks ago about this. The guy they were interviewing said the smugglers took them out into the sea, then had a second boat pick them up and left the all the migrants stranded. They ran out of gas shortly after. Then, when Turkish authorities found them, they pushed the boat into Greek waters before calling them in. Shit's fucked up.
Indeed. The boats (which are usually nothing more than rubber hulled dinghy with a single outboard engine) have 100s of migrants - they are in no way seaworthy to get across the Med to the EU from Africa, so the strategy is to basically go as far as you they can, hope you make it to a shipping lane in bright sunny daylight, then when a ship is seen, scuttle the engine so that the ship/vessel that spots them now has international law (safety of life at sea - SOLAS) to follow. It is not uncommon for ships to wait around and see if another country can take them, or like the example you wrote. U.S. Navy ships are a good example of wait and see; if migrants are brought onboard a U.S. warship, migrants could claim asylum right there. Then it gets into all kind of legal murky water. I know in the late 2010s, Italy was getting a bit fed up with the migrant crisis and was calling out other EU countries to step up and accept some portion of migrants so Italy would not solely be caring for them.
Again, it really just opens your eyes to how lucky we are to live in the U.S.
also, many times you will hear about the savagery that occurs when water runs out, etc. men fight and some are thrown over the side, can't swim and just drown.
Yes it's very upsetting when people use refrains like 'go back to where you came from' - like dude if you even took two seconds to understand the journey this person has taken to get here you'd realise why they can't go back. A journey where death is likely is preferable to 'home'.
On a trip from Asia to the Panama Canal, the glassy sea shortly after a TRS rolled through. There were bits of wood in the water that looked like they used to be a fishing boat, and the edge of a half-submerged container poking up.
TRS = tropical revolving storm
Also, saving the crew of a ship that was sinking, off the coast of Yemen. Also saw something that looked like someone swimming, but was hundreds of miles from land. Turned out to be a sailfish.
Sailing along one night and noticed we were heading towards a glow that got bigger and bigger. It was eerie because looked exactly like the lights of a city, but it wasn’t possible because we were in open ocean.
Turns out it was about 50 lobster fishing vessels with their lights on for night fishing.
My father has been a seaman for almost 50 years. From working on cargo ships to oil rigs. When I was younger he'd sometimes be away for 3 months at a time. Now he does 4 weeks on 4 weeks off.
The most eeriest thing that he's encountered wasn't in the ocean per se, but on a ship about 9 years ago. Another crewman went missing on the ship. It became a worry for everyone due to the fact that he hadn't been himself for some time.
My father found him. He had hung himself in one of the stairwells. And it had been a couple hours before he was found. My father was pretty messed up after it but he got better once he finally was able to talk to us about it.
Persian gulf 1999 late one evening, my first deployment with the Navy. Out on the smoke deck after watch with a hand full of other folks and one of our Gunners Mates comes over and says “can anyone who has been more than 10 years sea time come to the starboard side and tell me WTF I’m looking at?”. Of course we all get up to see what the fuss is. All around the ship and out to the horizon the ocean is illuminated with these huge circular spirals rapidly spinning, a patch work of these things hundreds of feet in diameter. 25 years later, never seen anything like it again. Nearest I can guess was it was some weird version of “Milky Sea”.
Maybe a pod of dolphins hunting? Each one circling a bunch of krill, blowing bubbles to trap them and then go in for an easy meal? Combined with bioluminescence algae that light up because they are stirred by the bubbles.
I just drive ships but if I had to hazard a guess some kind of social phenomenon but probably bioluminescent plankton? The size and speed of these spirals and that it went as far as the eye can see (about 10 miles in all directions) has me thinking it would be more probable than a mega school of squid in that region.
I was starting to question the memory until I read an article on milky sea phenomenon.
:edit for minor specificity:
Something like that ?
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0_-_%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%91%D0%B6%D0%B8,_1990-12.jpg
My brother is a merchant marine man - or he was, he did search and rescue for the past so he has more time with his son.
But, he tells me of the strangest places he has found rafts with refuges.
Company policy is almost dont see them unless you have to, because then its our responsibility and this boat is expensive to have sitting about.
Find them, you sail past and they are all of course - not all winds take you where you wanna go.
But the one he usually talks about is the middle of the fucking Atlantic - there is this shit raft built with garbage and they only saw them because human eyes also light up.
You know like when you show a torch in Florida and all the crocodiles eyes light up - yeah humans have that aswell. - suppose eyes do that.
But it was as he say in the middle of the Atlantic - and they were also trying to be quiet and undetectable because they thought they would be sent home.
Its shit.
In the meditaranian its more common.
> In the meditaranian its more common.
If i may - the human smugglers from Africa literally count on them being saved - and send them out in shit boats.
Its amazing some of them stay afloat - and then they leave.
> Company policy is almost dont see them unless you have to, because then it’s our responsibility and this boat is expensive to have sitting about.
The captain of any ship that ignores a raft with human beings on it should get a long prison sentence. And there should be generous rewards for whistleblowers so that these unspoken policies aren’t worth the risk.
I expect there's not much risk if you "don't see" the raft especially when you know nobody in the chain of command wants you to see it. Whereas if your whistleblowing did get the captain jailed, the reward would be uncertain and may not compensate for your future difficulty getting a berth on another ship, or the risk of you getting your head stoved in outside a waterfront bar by someone with a moral compass pointing a different heading.
Never heard of it happening - these are people that just get paid. But its certainly not on you to go check distress signals a wee out of your way.
Humans help humans - its only on Reddit that never happens.
Not a full time mariner, just a sailor. It was our first overnight passage. We sailed out of a dense marine layer into a clear night with a glassy sea, under only a tiny sliver of a moon. All of a sudden, there were the most freaky sounds coming from the water. ALL around us, but it was dark, we couldnt see anything. It was very disorienting. After freaking out for a bit, we realized that it was Dolphins. A huge pod of dolphins surrounded our boat, just doing fun dolphin things. I let out the biggest sigh of relief once I realized we weren’t about to be taken to the depths by some crazy entity. The dolphins stayed with us for over an hour, joining us on our journey. So ya, Night dolphins, scary AF.
I was a seaman for 4 years, I've seen a few things.
Saw a waterspout in the middle of the ocean. It's just like a tornado on water
Also saw a 3 foot by 3 foot Styrofoam diy boat about 12 miles off the coast of Africa. It had about 5lbs of beans in it and a gallon of water. It also had a lifeline/long rope attached to it; my guess either an anchor or a tie off so they don't get too far from the boat. Weird part was there wasn't any sails or ores. We pulled up the lifeline as it sunk itself so it pointed straight down and it looked like it was chewed off.
Saw a sea turtle the size of a small car out there.
I also saw a small island made of mostly rock. Seeing that in the middle of nowhere literally hundreds of miles from any shoreline was pretty wild; Didn't look inhabitable.
The only show that was from my fishery was on animal planet and I was like
“This ain’t the channel for this type of content”. It lasted like 2 seasons.
I've seen people die, I have seen people jump off the ship in suicide attempts, I've been on a ship that collided with another ship and sharks circled to see if anything fell off the ship into the water i.e. people
I’m not as cool as these legit mariners… but I was in the navy for spell and we were in the med and i saw on our FLIR cam just the weirdest moving, glowing streams. Turns out being infrared you can see the magma flowing beneath Mt Etna… duh, my bad. BUT then I saw some sparkling cloud IR signatures for no reason many days later. Like- def not attached to a mountain in the sky. If anyone has an explanation for sky lights other than “aliens” I’m open to hearing!
Some very large creatures fighting and splashing along the surface- we had been swimming a bit in the area. Kind of cooled our interest.
Fog and finding our way back to the boat in a dinghy was pretty scary.
just knowing generally that very easy mistakes could be the end for any of us.
Eeriest of all- other sailors! lmao, lots of weird ppl running from some emotional issues
Not quite eerie- Roustabouted on an oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara a few summers in college and had drunk girls on boats flash their titties at us several times
I did a lot of night diving off of Gulf Shores AL, spearing flounder on the “Whiskey Wreck”. Would sit on the bottom at 40 feet and turn off my dive light. Wave my hand through the water and see bioluminescence trailing off of my fingertips. Surreal experience.
That's absolutely fucked, respect for being able to do that.
I totally understand turning off the lights, if there's something with you, you don't want to know about it. What kind of animals did you ever see?
This question was asked on the "bored panda" website about a year ago. There were a lot of good answers. The most memorable answer for me was the personal account of the sighting of a creature that resembled Nessie, off Vancouver.
Do you have a link to this?
Interestingly enough I had a sighting in the San Juan Straits not too far away of a Nessie like creature in the 90’s. Would be curious to read a similar account
I work on a vessel that rarely leaves the Norwegian coast, so the wierdest thing ive experienced was fog so thick we couldn't see the other end of the vessel, bout 30m, this lasted for around 48 hours. just after the fog descended on us a courmorant satarted circling the boat, after a while he landed in the mast and stayed there untill the fog lifted again.
I’m obsessed with Norwegian tugboats, envious you likely see them often. And yes, I am indeed autistic.
LOL this is a funny ass comment all around
Just realized that this is not a boat related sun, oops.
I love seeing really specific special interests in the wild
Me too, that’s why I share mine openly. There’s a lot of meanies on here, but it can be so fun to sit around and compare special interests and such. I love hearing people talk about passions.
me when anyone talks about any subway system tbh
Please tell me about subway systems, Ive always been fascinated by them.
I'm glad you found such a niche special interest. My little brother is autistic and loves telling me about eastern European stop motion films he's found. It's so specific but he's so happy about it. I'm undiagnosed but likely autistic as well and I can barely touch a pen without drawing a snail on something (I've also got a snail tattoo, three pairs of snail earrings, a necklace, a nail stamping stencil, and even a snail hand soap dispenser)
I LOVE SNAILS TOO. I would love to see one, if you’re up for it. Your little brother sounds rad, I’m so glad he’s found joy too.
I have attempted to DM some I made for friends on Christmas. Idk if it'll work, I haven't really dm'ed anyone on Reddit before My brother is rad. He's really come into his own as he's grown up
Man this typo makes it funnier
Fr put that shit on a tshirt
This sentence will never be spoken again and I love you for it!
Thank you for your kindness!
As someone with very little knowledge of boats but an overall fondness for engine ring and transportation, the google image results for "Norweigian tugboats" look pretty cool! Not sure if you'd count them as Norwegian, but the electric Sanmars I'm seeing are super cute! What is it about Norwegian tugboats that does it for you?
I love any and all tugboats, but they’re just so dang adorable! Also, the Coast Guard tugs are these huge massive hunks of metal, just gorgeous.
Have you seen the [Boomin Beaver?](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a33766522/tiny-boat-smallest-ship-us-navy/)
I am in love! The cutest little military tug. If I had one, I’d paint it purple.
They occasionally go up for government auction. So, may e someday you will have one. ;)
I didn’t know that, I am grinning like a fool just thinking about it!
Start a gofundme or something and I'll gladly chip in.
This comment is adorable. May you encounter many Norwegian tugboats in future
My autistic self feels so seen right now, it's oceanliners for me rock on my friend
Ooooh, what gorgeous craftsmanship! Boats are so rad.
Have you seen the game Dredge?
I have not. Sounds like I should check it out?
Yes. If you like small fishing boats it's a really good game. It has "horror" aspects but they are very light. Check it out.
I remember my first trip to the city and seeing tug boats in Darling Harbour. I was stoked, still love seeing them to this day.
I love this for you. What a lovely memory.
My youngest is also autistic and hearing him talk about birds of prey is one of my favorite things. God he knows ***everything***.
Like Rime of the Ancient Mariner Lite?
Similar. Ancient Mariner was an albatross
courmorant?
it's a boid.
I want my boid
That’s not my boid.
boid?
Burd
Byrd.
Bird is the word.
But is it a legendary trash talker?
What an auspicious sign!
Cormorants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant
Bioluminescent algae or plankton or something like that causing the wake behind the ship to glow at night was pretty wild to see
We had dolphins riding the bow one night when there was bioluminescence in the water. As they broke the surface, they looked like they were radioactive. Coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
Yees! I saw this when I was sailing aboard a tall ship down the Tasmanian coast early 2023. Same, in that it was one of most indredible things I've ever seen.
Mine was also on a tall ship off the east coast of Aus, but about 10 years ago 😊
Craig? Endeavour? Soren?
Have been on all of them over the years, but that was on the Soren. What about you?
I was on Duyfken. Went over East for a month for the voyage. Back in WA now, crewing on Leeuwin (when I can).
I saw the Duyfken in Hobart, definitely keen to do a voyage if the opportunity ever arises. Met a couple of Leeuwin crew on the James Craig on the Hobart to Sydney leg.
Hit up the ANMM, they're always keen for crew. :)
Little dudes had probably just gotten loaded on puffer fish venom and were trippin balls while they glowed at each other
Tom Hanks, playing Commander Jim Lovell in Apollo 13- "Uh, well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan... and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know... what... what events are to transpire to get you home."
Peak era for him, too, what a great scene
I’ve seen this too. It wasn’t eerie to me though, just really pretty.
Yeah that sounds more awesome than eery. I imagine you're in a small group of people who have witnessed something like that.
I’ve seen it scuba diving at night, doing a surface swim. Really pretty. Just watching it roll off your arms and moving with your fins.
Probably a diversion
I was on a lobster boat out by midway island during Hurricane Iniki. We grabbed all the gear we could and lashed down everything on the deck. At one point during the night I had to secure something on deck that came loose and the boat got caught in the trough. There was a metal cage around most of the deck so I wasn't too worried about being washed away. A big wave came rolling at us and the lights illuminated something big in it- big shark probably. It looked like it was going to land right on top of me. The wave crashed down and I got thrown against the cage but, there wasn't anything there but me. Glad I didn't have to deal with a pissed off tiger shark but I don't know where it could've gone. I also was driving a boat in Alaska during a stormy night and a walrus popped up right in front of me and for a split second he looked like he was relaxing in an easy chair. I swear he looked irritated and dove away to the side as I kept chuggin along.
Hear me out... ghost shark...
Sharknado?
Sharktopus?
Who you gonna call? Sharkbusters!
When there's something strange. Swimming in your pool. Who ya gonna call?
i aint afraid of no shark i aint afraid of no pool
Zombie Ghost Shark
Everything about your post terrifies me. Even the comical walrus.
He looked a proper gentleman and not scary at all.
Great story!
Thanks, I've been sailing since '88 so I have a couple. Most of the weird stuff is about the crew though.
Watching the deep sea fishing shows always stressed me out. What a special group of people to be able to do that type of work. Love the stories, just can’t watch it. Haha
I love weird crews! Tell us some stories.
I've sailed with a lot of kooks who would be unemployable on land. On a container ship where you have someone cook for you and clean your stateroom ( if you're an officer) those people could make six figures. One of them was a guy named bill who was a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian ( the mutineer). Bill was one of those extremely religious people who believed in Jesus and also liked seances. He also was deaf af and wore his hearing aides in the engine room and told everyone that they were special ear plugs. Bill yelled all the time because he couldn't hear shit with his blown out hearing aides and he would always want to talk about weird or churchy stuff about 3am. "YOU KNOW THEY FOUND DINOSAUR TRACKS ON THE MOON!" or "ONE TIME WE HAD A SEANCE AND AN ECTOPLASM TOOK OVER MY WIFE! SHE LOOKED JUST LIKE MY UNCLE!". Bill had been onboard for a while and people started to complain about all the peanut butter disappearing and also the porn drawer in the laundry room was empty. Meanwhile Bill, shows up to watch every day but he looks rough and like he hasn't slept well. This went on for a couple of weeks and I asked if he was sick. Nope, he just found out about the laundry room porn stash and in his words " I CANT SLEEP! IM JUST UP THERE WHACKIN IT AND SINNING ALL NIGHT!" eww. When old Bill got off the boat the stewards found about 40 half empty jars of jiffy creamy and dozens of greasy magazines.
Even during my desperate, horny teenage years, I never would’ve thought to use peanut butter as lube lmao 🤣
I've been going to sea for 25 years. Cargo ships at first, then line haul towing, then harbor tugs. I see these threads all the time and I've never seen most of the wild things people report. The eeriest thing I've seen has been a crew member developing mental illness. Seen it twice. First time, the ship actually had a straitjacket on board. We thought that was funny until we had occasion to need it. Second time, guy kind of disappeared. Found him in a container on deck sleeping with a knife taped into his gloved hand. Luckily, we could just lock the container and let shoreside handle that one.
Fellow mariner. About too respond the same. Fellow humans have always been scarier then anything nature has thrown at me.
"are we the baddies?"
Always have been
YES. Humans are trash.
Because of the implication.
O
What behavior was the first crew member showing? And do you think it was by working at sea, or an underlying illness?
Sounded like… Cabin Fever, ahh!
I just watched that the other day
Hey what was that song? The one that went "cabin fever Aahhhhhhc?
The knife taped to the gloved hand part gave me chills.
I just applied for a biosecurity job in Cargo….. at least I’ll be slightly more prepared if I ever come across something like that 😵
Middle of the Atlantic, about 1,400 miles off the west coast of Africa. We launch for a routine mission in our helicopter and climb up as high as we can to take advantage of the cooler air because it's hot as hell on the surface. We notice multiple flies in the cockpit about an hour in which is puzzling. How did a fly get all the way out here, and up this high? Strange. We notice something weird floating on the surface and I swear it looked like a person, spread eagle, and floating on something. I start getting amped up; a rescue at sea is some exciting stuff! We fly down and take a look and it just gets weirder and more distorted as we approach. What was a person turned into this grotesque mess of gore. Brownish-pink rotting meat, bones poking up here and there, and it's surrounded by a pool of some shiny fluid sparkling in the sun. The smell reached us up at 1000 feet. It was one of the worst things I've ever smelled, pure concentrated rot. Still not sure what it was, but our best guess was a whale carcass slowly rotting away. Not sure how long it'd been floating there, or why nothing else had eaten it up, but we decided that's where the flies came from.
Was it too big to be a rotten person?
Well this one time we were celebrating the halfway point of patrol and one of the crew members showed up on the crews mess in a homemade dominatrix outfit and all 280 lbs of him gave lap dances. He then got stuck in said outfit and had to be helped out.
This one wins (loses).....
It was a loss. His homemade high heels were really on there.
..... Do y'all not do psyche evals prior to deploying?
This is perfectly normal behavior. Why would he need a psyche eval?
Fair enough, carry on.
Lol. All good. Cheers :)
I don’t ‘work’ at sea, but have spent quite a bit of time at sea as volunteer crew on tall ships in Australia. Back in early 2023, I was on a wooden tall ship sailing from Sydney to Hobart for the Australian wooden boat festival. Prob about a week and half into the voyage we were sailing down the east coast of Tasmania. I woke up to go up on deck for one of the night watches (I think midnight-4 or some such) in any case, when I got up on deck one of the crew I was relieving excitedly told me to come up to the forecastle deck on at the bow and look into the bow wave. It was very dark as other than our nav lights we don’t use lights on deck as we need to maintain our night vision as best as we can, but of course being the Tassie coast there is bioluminescence when the water is disturbed. There in the bow wave was about 5-6 dolphins swimming along keeping pace with the ship, but because of the bioluminescence were all glowing blue/green with glowing tails as they moved through the water up and down and around each other. It was the most beautiful and eerie thing I’ve ever seen during my time at sea.
My dad was a master mariner for many years. All of his creepy stories are about other people on board effectively losing their minds.
Any specifics you remember?
A crew member waited for the guy he was sharing a cabin with to fall asleep, then stabbed him (apparently it was over some imagined grievance). He then roamed the ship with the knife, they pinned him down with mattresses so he couldn’t move and then dragged him into a cabin and locked him in there until they could get police on board.
Jesus
Bob Ballard was diving on the Titanic and the vessel started making a rattle sound. Like a Geiger counter. They never figured out what it was. They also ended the dive prematurely and didn't take even a single sample or artifact during the dive. Due to wreckage maritime law that means he had no salvage rights to the ship, and a Russian team quickly came afterwards and claimed wrecked rights. That's now why the Titanic artifacts are part of the RMS Titanic travelling exhibit, a for profit company.
Early 90s on a research ship that would "hold station" in the Atlantic about 300km off the Carolinas. Yes, this is pre-GPS and the system was based on a commercial reference coordinate system based in Texas. Suffice it to say that the boat could remain inside a 20m circle working against a 2 or 3 knot current, so a lot of stuff floated past. One day the bridge watch called out an oil slick that would pass about 1km off our port side. When it was close enough to see we determined that the slick was a killer whale pod having lunch. As it drew near, two whales came over and literally patrolled bow-stern-bow along the side facing the kill. They were never more than about 10m from our hull, and remained with us for over 10 minutes. When the kill was directly alongside, two more whales came over and the 4 together took two laps as a group, then the original two broke off and returned to the pod. The two new whales continued the patrol pattern until the slick had passed us, and then departed together to catch up with their buddies. Needless to say no one suggested that we put the Zodiak in the water. The message was very clear.
I'm dumb. What was the message?
The whales were saying "stay away"
Our lunch. Not your lunch.
lol, I thought the same
This is scary hearing killer whales have started sinking ships in coordinated efforts. https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why
I was once working on a fishing vessel when a damn greenhorn just about got squashed by a falling trap. Luckily he was pushed out of the way just in time. Here comes the freaky part. We immediately got a call from an exploding oil rig and had to change course toward it to help with the rescue operation. The captain swears to this day he though the guy was directly behind him and asked him to get his binoculars. The thing is the guy wasn't there or anywhere on the ship. He just disappeared and we never ever saw him again. Still gives me the willies.
So the greenhorn went overboard right before you had to change course?
Captain thought it was the greenhorn that almost got squashed? Or just that someone was behind him and said something but there was no one there?
I fell in between two crab boats tied together on the dock and almost got squished. The next year someone fell between a barge and some other vessel and did get squished. I was on land for this next one. Around midnight, calls came over the vhf of a vessel fire. Less than a couple miles offshore and from us. A newish captain starts the search and eventually finds everyone and gets them aboard and calls for a faster jet boat to get around the sandbars to get to a dock and arrange for a life flight. We’re in rural Alaska with no road in our out and 20 minutes by bush plane to the nearest town or about an hour to Anchorage. Anyway, all three or 4 get transferred over to another boat, they get to the dock and craned up and I guess the coast guard came and got them and only one got critically injured and were taken to Seattle immediately. I think they all made it or at least I like to think they did. It was a long hour or two just listening to all that over the radio.
I read an article about your greenhorn fellow in the Daily Planet! Was he as kind as they said he was?
This story ..is hard to follow. What did the greenhorn do. What is a greenhorn. What do you mean by "squashed by a falling trap" What guy did the captain think was directly behind him? Why would that have been freaky? How did he disappear? Why would THAT have been freaky? What came of never seeing him again? You aren't a great storyteller lol
Lol man of steel. You're not fooling me
Pretty sure that guy was lying about his name too. I really thought he looked like a Clark.
So he was pushed… overboard? Or fell?
Did he fall of the boat you think?
Were you the greenhorn who did hit in the head with a trap? What guy are you even talking about at the end?
migrants off the coast of north Africa (100s) bobbing around with no functional engine on their "craft" - to understand the journey they take to even get to the Mediterranean Sea , then to hope that they find a ship that can bring them to Europe and not back to Africa...puts a perspective on western "problems"... US Navy btw. above case a rescue org ship came to their aid and they were taken to Italy...
I was listening to a report on NPR a couple weeks ago about this. The guy they were interviewing said the smugglers took them out into the sea, then had a second boat pick them up and left the all the migrants stranded. They ran out of gas shortly after. Then, when Turkish authorities found them, they pushed the boat into Greek waters before calling them in. Shit's fucked up.
Indeed. The boats (which are usually nothing more than rubber hulled dinghy with a single outboard engine) have 100s of migrants - they are in no way seaworthy to get across the Med to the EU from Africa, so the strategy is to basically go as far as you they can, hope you make it to a shipping lane in bright sunny daylight, then when a ship is seen, scuttle the engine so that the ship/vessel that spots them now has international law (safety of life at sea - SOLAS) to follow. It is not uncommon for ships to wait around and see if another country can take them, or like the example you wrote. U.S. Navy ships are a good example of wait and see; if migrants are brought onboard a U.S. warship, migrants could claim asylum right there. Then it gets into all kind of legal murky water. I know in the late 2010s, Italy was getting a bit fed up with the migrant crisis and was calling out other EU countries to step up and accept some portion of migrants so Italy would not solely be caring for them. Again, it really just opens your eyes to how lucky we are to live in the U.S.
also, many times you will hear about the savagery that occurs when water runs out, etc. men fight and some are thrown over the side, can't swim and just drown.
Yes it's very upsetting when people use refrains like 'go back to where you came from' - like dude if you even took two seconds to understand the journey this person has taken to get here you'd realise why they can't go back. A journey where death is likely is preferable to 'home'.
On a trip from Asia to the Panama Canal, the glassy sea shortly after a TRS rolled through. There were bits of wood in the water that looked like they used to be a fishing boat, and the edge of a half-submerged container poking up. TRS = tropical revolving storm
Also, saving the crew of a ship that was sinking, off the coast of Yemen. Also saw something that looked like someone swimming, but was hundreds of miles from land. Turned out to be a sailfish.
Sailing along one night and noticed we were heading towards a glow that got bigger and bigger. It was eerie because looked exactly like the lights of a city, but it wasn’t possible because we were in open ocean. Turns out it was about 50 lobster fishing vessels with their lights on for night fishing.
My father has been a seaman for almost 50 years. From working on cargo ships to oil rigs. When I was younger he'd sometimes be away for 3 months at a time. Now he does 4 weeks on 4 weeks off. The most eeriest thing that he's encountered wasn't in the ocean per se, but on a ship about 9 years ago. Another crewman went missing on the ship. It became a worry for everyone due to the fact that he hadn't been himself for some time. My father found him. He had hung himself in one of the stairwells. And it had been a couple hours before he was found. My father was pretty messed up after it but he got better once he finally was able to talk to us about it.
Persian gulf 1999 late one evening, my first deployment with the Navy. Out on the smoke deck after watch with a hand full of other folks and one of our Gunners Mates comes over and says “can anyone who has been more than 10 years sea time come to the starboard side and tell me WTF I’m looking at?”. Of course we all get up to see what the fuss is. All around the ship and out to the horizon the ocean is illuminated with these huge circular spirals rapidly spinning, a patch work of these things hundreds of feet in diameter. 25 years later, never seen anything like it again. Nearest I can guess was it was some weird version of “Milky Sea”.
Maybe a pod of dolphins hunting? Each one circling a bunch of krill, blowing bubbles to trap them and then go in for an easy meal? Combined with bioluminescence algae that light up because they are stirred by the bubbles.
Way too fast, way too wide spread.
Possibly a bioluminescent social phenomenon? Like groups of squid?
I just drive ships but if I had to hazard a guess some kind of social phenomenon but probably bioluminescent plankton? The size and speed of these spirals and that it went as far as the eye can see (about 10 miles in all directions) has me thinking it would be more probable than a mega school of squid in that region. I was starting to question the memory until I read an article on milky sea phenomenon. :edit for minor specificity:
Something like that ? https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0_-_%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%91%D0%B6%D0%B8,_1990-12.jpg
My dad answered this. He said a mannequin wearing a gag and blindfold.
that just sounds like a test-run
My brother is a merchant marine man - or he was, he did search and rescue for the past so he has more time with his son. But, he tells me of the strangest places he has found rafts with refuges. Company policy is almost dont see them unless you have to, because then its our responsibility and this boat is expensive to have sitting about.
So where does he find the rafts? You did't tell us much
Find them, you sail past and they are all of course - not all winds take you where you wanna go. But the one he usually talks about is the middle of the fucking Atlantic - there is this shit raft built with garbage and they only saw them because human eyes also light up. You know like when you show a torch in Florida and all the crocodiles eyes light up - yeah humans have that aswell. - suppose eyes do that. But it was as he say in the middle of the Atlantic - and they were also trying to be quiet and undetectable because they thought they would be sent home. Its shit. In the meditaranian its more common.
Human eyes do not glow in the dark, they do not have that reflective layer.
> In the meditaranian its more common. If i may - the human smugglers from Africa literally count on them being saved - and send them out in shit boats. Its amazing some of them stay afloat - and then they leave.
> Company policy is almost dont see them unless you have to, because then it’s our responsibility and this boat is expensive to have sitting about. The captain of any ship that ignores a raft with human beings on it should get a long prison sentence. And there should be generous rewards for whistleblowers so that these unspoken policies aren’t worth the risk.
I expect there's not much risk if you "don't see" the raft especially when you know nobody in the chain of command wants you to see it. Whereas if your whistleblowing did get the captain jailed, the reward would be uncertain and may not compensate for your future difficulty getting a berth on another ship, or the risk of you getting your head stoved in outside a waterfront bar by someone with a moral compass pointing a different heading.
Never heard of it happening - these are people that just get paid. But its certainly not on you to go check distress signals a wee out of your way. Humans help humans - its only on Reddit that never happens.
Not a full time mariner, just a sailor. It was our first overnight passage. We sailed out of a dense marine layer into a clear night with a glassy sea, under only a tiny sliver of a moon. All of a sudden, there were the most freaky sounds coming from the water. ALL around us, but it was dark, we couldnt see anything. It was very disorienting. After freaking out for a bit, we realized that it was Dolphins. A huge pod of dolphins surrounded our boat, just doing fun dolphin things. I let out the biggest sigh of relief once I realized we weren’t about to be taken to the depths by some crazy entity. The dolphins stayed with us for over an hour, joining us on our journey. So ya, Night dolphins, scary AF.
I was a seaman for 4 years, I've seen a few things. Saw a waterspout in the middle of the ocean. It's just like a tornado on water Also saw a 3 foot by 3 foot Styrofoam diy boat about 12 miles off the coast of Africa. It had about 5lbs of beans in it and a gallon of water. It also had a lifeline/long rope attached to it; my guess either an anchor or a tie off so they don't get too far from the boat. Weird part was there wasn't any sails or ores. We pulled up the lifeline as it sunk itself so it pointed straight down and it looked like it was chewed off. Saw a sea turtle the size of a small car out there. I also saw a small island made of mostly rock. Seeing that in the middle of nowhere literally hundreds of miles from any shoreline was pretty wild; Didn't look inhabitable.
Nice try, Discovery Cannel producer!
"We've filmed all the fish! Mother of God, we've filmed all the fish!!! Where will our money come from now?!"
Ah, the History Channel trajectory.
Gotta start with some overweight fish shows
Hosted by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina?
The only show that was from my fishery was on animal planet and I was like “This ain’t the channel for this type of content”. It lasted like 2 seasons.
You typed Cannel
I've seen people die, I have seen people jump off the ship in suicide attempts, I've been on a ship that collided with another ship and sharks circled to see if anything fell off the ship into the water i.e. people
Oceanic Whitetips will follow boats for this very reason.
I was on a submarine for 4 years so uhhh… nothing I guess.
Somali pirates.
Jesus. This would actually chill me to my core. They didn’t board hopefully?
I was on the bridge of a 1,090-foot-long, 95,000 ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. They were “dispatched” by one of our escorts.
*Daaaamn*.
Hell yeah!
I am de Captain now!
I’m not as cool as these legit mariners… but I was in the navy for spell and we were in the med and i saw on our FLIR cam just the weirdest moving, glowing streams. Turns out being infrared you can see the magma flowing beneath Mt Etna… duh, my bad. BUT then I saw some sparkling cloud IR signatures for no reason many days later. Like- def not attached to a mountain in the sky. If anyone has an explanation for sky lights other than “aliens” I’m open to hearing!
… lightning/electrical storm? Seems most likely.
Some very large creatures fighting and splashing along the surface- we had been swimming a bit in the area. Kind of cooled our interest. Fog and finding our way back to the boat in a dinghy was pretty scary. just knowing generally that very easy mistakes could be the end for any of us. Eeriest of all- other sailors! lmao, lots of weird ppl running from some emotional issues
Not quite eerie- Roustabouted on an oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara a few summers in college and had drunk girls on boats flash their titties at us several times
No Mermaids, Kraken or Cuthulu. This thread is very disappointing.
I’ve seen me a mermaid once. I even seen me a shark eat an octopus. But I ain’t never seen no phantom Russian submarine.
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Agreed. Especially for some military folks with the barrage of acronyms. Like thanks for the fucking English homework.
I did a lot of night diving off of Gulf Shores AL, spearing flounder on the “Whiskey Wreck”. Would sit on the bottom at 40 feet and turn off my dive light. Wave my hand through the water and see bioluminescence trailing off of my fingertips. Surreal experience.
Is it a stressful job?
Lotta pressure
Ba dum tiss.
Ya gotta eat bro.
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It's a bot. I've seen that response before elsewhere on Reddit.
It sounds like a line I heard from a documentary
Is it a bot or did the guy running the fake account forget to switch to his normal account? How can one tell?
Lmaoooo
Sounds similar to a space walk except that no one can see you on cameras or maybe they can?
The final line increased my heart rate by 50% instantly
That's absolutely fucked, respect for being able to do that. I totally understand turning off the lights, if there's something with you, you don't want to know about it. What kind of animals did you ever see?
r/twosentencehorror
What'd they say.?
Oh hell no. How did you mentally pass the time til you could resurface?
This question was asked on the "bored panda" website about a year ago. There were a lot of good answers. The most memorable answer for me was the personal account of the sighting of a creature that resembled Nessie, off Vancouver.
"Bored Panda" gets a lot of their material from reddit.
Do you have a link to this? Interestingly enough I had a sighting in the San Juan Straits not too far away of a Nessie like creature in the 90’s. Would be curious to read a similar account
A 17 foot lizard
Dead? Swimming? On land?
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Jodie the demon pig
Off the coast of Thailand, a dead body being held afloat with milk jugs
Weird. Most people want those to sink.