When you watch "The Little Mermaid", you think that life under the sea is the greatest place on Earth.
The crystal blue waters and the cool, calm ripples.
The musical numbers.
What a lie. The ocean is death waiting to happen.
There are things we've long suspected waiting for us.
And things we couldn't have possibly thought could be real.
Get out of the water kids.
Let that crazy old lady give the diamond to the sea as a sacrifice.
Redditor this_is_not_me_6 wanted to discuss all the things we may not want to know, but should about the sea... they asked:
"What are some disturbing facts about the ocean?"
The ocean is a sea of mess.
Feed Me
hungry feed me GIFGiphy"The largest biomass migration takes place every night when deep sea animals come up to feed."
Supraman83
Pitch Black
"I remember watching a YouTube interview with a military diver. He described how when you’re doing a covert op you spend a lot of time just underwater doing nothing with no lights on until it’s time to move. He specifically mentioned how he had to get used to having large things bump into him in the pitch black."
Freaked_The_Eff_Out
Sonar
"The sonar we use for deep sea mapping really screws up a number of species especially whales, dolphins and porpoises. Imagine walking around and a tornado alarm decibel-level noise triggers right next to you. We do that every time we use that high-powered sonar and it basically f's up their own sonar abilities causing them to be unable to communicate and navigate."
Reyltjj
Scattered
"Once did a night dive where we covered our lights while resting on the floor at about 50'. You cover your light and wave your hand and you can see bioluminescent bacteria in the water. Well I was looking up when we uncovered our lights, there were hundreds of barracuda between us and the boat. They scattered from the light though."
bwtaha
Gone
Looking I See You GIF by Shark WeekGiphy"Lost sailors in the sea who cling to wreckage basically have their skin dissolved by salt water after soaking for more than 3 days."
SnooOranges4231
At this point I feel like a shower may even be dangerous. Water issues...
Hot Bubbles
hot tub jacuzzi GIFGiphy"'Hot tub of despair' is a lake under the ocean, in the gulf of Mexico. It is highly concentrated with salt and has dissolved methane. Any creature that enters dies."
Abathur11235
the bottom...
"There are perfectly-preserved shipwrecks from ancient Greece preserved at the bottom of the Black Sea. The water is so deep that it becomes anoxic (oxygen free), which preserves organic materials like wood. Shipwrecks are cool, but I find the phenomenon a little disturbing, since there is probably no life down there."
"Here's an article from a few years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact-shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea"
colorforge
When you bleed...
"The ocean is blue because all the other pigments are absorbed. So after a certain distance down everything thing becomes a monotone blue color, unless you have some other light source. The freaky part is if a diver gets cut underwater the blood looks black, like ink. All the red has long since been absorbed so there’s no wavelengths left to show you a red color when you bleed."
Lord_of_the_Canals
Not a Care
"I tell new scuba divers this: The ocean doesn’t care about you. It’s not actively trying to kill you. But it will do a lot of things on its own that will absolutely kill you if you’re not prepared and paying attention. I realize this could apply to any natural environment but it feels much more apt when talking about the ocean. One wave that you weren’t prepared for can make your day pretty bad. For the ocean it’s just business as usual."
bg-j38
Poison
Marine Life Sea GIF by BBCGiphy"Just one millilitre of coastal water taken from the ocean's surface can contain up to 10 million viruses. The number of viruses decreases further offshore and deeper into the water."
SuvenPan
No Air
"There are parts of the ocean which are dead no oxygen in the water which means nothing can survive, no fish no plankton nothing at all. They are spreading exponentially. Whilst they are tiny now and have been. At the rate of growth. They’ll cause serious problems before the end of the century."
Emergency-Tiger4339
The Fisher Items
"Most of the plastic pollution in the ocean is not from straws, shopping bags, or consumer items as most of us were led to believe. It’s from fishing nets and fishing gear."
TheSheekGeek
Heartless Lover
"It doesn't hate you. It doesn't love you. It doesn't even know you exist. When it destroys/capsizes your boat your boat didn't even cause a change in its movements. I am a sailor and I am in love with a cold heartless *itch who couldn't care less whether I live or die."
Intelligent-Lie-7407
Swimming Dead
twd GIF by The Walking DeadGiphy"When sea creatures die in the ocean and their bones sink to the deep ocean floor, zombie worms eat the bones. The skin secretes an acid dissolving the bones, digesting the remaining fat and protein left behind."
creeeeaaach
Remains
"Well Crippin should have dumped his wife's remains in the ocean because not an ounce of food goes to waste including the bones. If you need to get rid of a mass grave don't bury dump at sea and the entire body will be eaten which will actually be beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole. We shouldn't be burying people but dumping them at sea."
TwistedDecayingFlesh
Dipped
"When you dip your toe in the water you are no longer at the top of the food chain."
Kermitsfinger
"Isn’t that true on land as well? If you go hiking, grizzly bears and mountain lions could still mess you up. Same thing if you go to the savannah. There are plenty of animals there that are higher than you on the food chain."
outofdate70shouse
Giant Squids
"We don't really know whats it in I can say that for thousands of years we drew sea monsters believing they lived in it. Surprising a lot of stuff we found in those pictures were in the ocean. (Giant Squid recently ). Just makes you think what else is actually down there that we don't know about."
ghigoli
the 1%
Mr Bean Beach GIF by Working TitleGiphy"Only 1% of its floor has been explored. It’s pretty common knowledge by now, but most people don’t understand how absolutely insane it really is. We know more about the surface of mars than we do our oceans floor."
LandscapeLost992
Underwater
"I’m a scuba diver and one thing that really scared me when I first started off diving, you hear SO MUCH more underwater then you ever will above on the surface, I’m not even talking about like the shifting or just the water itself moving, your hear things like fish clicking and other things like that, cuz underwater sounds move and travel a lot more so you hear a lot more and much quicker, was pretty out of nowhere when I first went under."
Cogburn____CG
This is why I hate the beach. I'm staying on dry land forever.
Often, thoughts of life sailing large ships across the high seas feel like distant fantasies.
We encounter those scenes in novels, high budget films, old myths, and video games.
But we cannot forget that there are so many people across the world that earn their living working as a crew member on a large ship that crosses vast distances of open water.
The consumer products we buy and the food we eat is so often only at our door thanks to the hard work of freighters around the world.
And, as one recent Reddit thread illustrated, each of those ships has a crew full of people with stories to tell.
The unique conditions of exhausting, difficult life far from land can't help but make for some very eerie occurrences, whether they be real or imagined.
HijoDelSombreron asked, "Sailors, seamen and overall people who spend a vast amount of time in the ocean. Have you ever witnessed something you would catalog as supernatural or unusual? What was it like?"
Some people discussed the times they truly felt that they'd come into contact with a haunted, supernatural being. There simply was no other way to explain a horrifying feeling they got out of nowhere.
Saving Spirit
"Sailed on tallships for a good while, among other things."
"Saw some green flashes, a moon bow, lots of phosphorescence, big whales, st elmo's fire on our mast (steel ship this time)."
"But the only creepy story was at port. The only person who had ever died on the ship was over a hundred years ago, and he fell from the rigging. Went splat. One of the crew was up furling sails, and was about to step out onto the foot rope that runs along the yard. He said he got an overwhelming urge to not step on it, and felt a tug on his harness keeping him from stepping out."
"He was so freaked out he kept the other two guys behind him from getting on the line as well. The other guys started getting a really bad feeling too, and they decided to check out the footrope. It had been really degrading on the inside, even through the outside looked mostly fine."
"The line probably would have snapped as they climbed out there, and they would have fallen, as you are pretty much free climbing until you get to a stopping point."
A Heaviness
"When I was roving patrol on a submarine I always thought I saw someone walking parallel to me down missile compartment upper level. If I was on the port side then I saw them on the starboard side and vice-versa. I always chalked it up to pipes and valves creating weird shadows. Additionally, it felt 'heavy' on that level like there was some sort of presence - the feeling you get when someone's watching you."
"I never told anyone, then one day a few weeks into patrol, one of the other rovers asked me if it felt 'weird' up there. He specifically said that he saw someone up there too just like I had. We shared stories and then talked to the third rover and he said 'I only go up there to do my rounds every hour then get the fu** out of that haunted level.' "
-- praxis4
Other people shared similar experiences, but often chalked it all up to the work of their own brains. Life on the open ocean is apparently very conducive to hallucinating.
Who's Out There
"In the Gulf of Aden having been at sea for a while and with absolutely blistering heat, I heard my nickname called 3 times. Clearly and loudly. It was my first time with this particular crew and none of them knew my nickname."
"My best guess is dehydration and stress but I'll never forget it."
Was Someone Left?
"Distress flares in the middle of the Indian Ocean sailing Nigeria-Japan at night when I was a Third Mate. Looked less than 4 miles away. Altered course to it, called the Old Man. Found nothing and no one over the course of two hours. I was the only one to see it, and I know what I saw. (My watchman was down closing cabin shades.)"
"I understand why we had to move on. Keeps me up some nights though. Did we come so close to saving someone's life, and just leave them there? Alone in the ocean. No food or water. Did someone think they were rescued but we ended up too far from them? Should we have waited until daytime? Did I just hallucinate?"
-- RoCNOD
Group Hallucination
"On my first deployment to south east Asia I was flying over the Sea of Japan and saw a large pulsing aura of red light far enough below the surface I could not make out a source. We were 30ish miles from shore and had not been briefed on any assets in the area that might make something like that make sense. No erroneous indications on instruments or radio chatter."
"Just slow steady pulsing red light. We saw it, circled it a few times, made a note of the time and location we encountered it and my crew chief asked if I wouldn't mind getting the hell out of there. So we finished our transit and I made a note of everything in my debrief. I passed it up the chain of command but they basically wrote it off as some sort of visual phenomenon we had from a long day of flying in dry suits. It's always been hard to imagine our entire crew hallucinating the same thing."
Night Duty
"I was a sailor in the navy. While I was on lookout duty on the bridge at night, a dude walked and stood beside me, breathing hard. I was looking out at sea and I was blocking the stairs going down, so I turned around to whisper 'sorry,' and what do you know, there's no one. I was tired so I chalked this up to hallucination, but it felt real."
-- wolf-bot
Others discussed experiences driven by the very real, believable aspects of the ocean's whims and all the air does out there.
Sometimes, the natural world can terrify us--while it calms us too.
Sudden Stop
"The closest to supernatural or at least something I can't explain, happened half way between Cornwall and the Scillies. We were sailing in a fresh breeze, 5-6 ft. swells maybe. That's perfectly fine sailing weather but the boat will rock and there will be quite a bit of noise from the wind, the sails and waves."
"So we sail happy along when suddenly the sea is perfectly flat and every thing is quiet, like somebody turned the sound off. I look around and the water is pitch dark. It only lasted for a minute and then everything was back to normal but I got a really eerie feeling."
Interrupted Glass
"The ocean water was so still, it appeared that we were sailing on glass; not one ripple. I have never seen this again." -- TheLatty
"Experienced the same while traversing Makassar strait going to Surabaya, Indonesia."
"It was like sailing through a lake and the only ripple you can see was from the wake of the ship. Wished all the of the seas were the same haha." -- Gunner000
Pin Drop Tension
"Spent a lot of time sailing commercially in the Irish Sea, on night watch you are always acutely aware of everything around you due to the silence and darkness. Some of the sounds you hear are deeply unsettling."
"I remember on a perfectly still night just hearing a gentle knocking noise coming from what seemed like the outside of the hull at the waterline. No idea what it was but it freaked me out all shift."
-- Brockers55
Blurring Horizon
"I was standing in the hangar bay waiting for morning muster at dawn somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Looking out at the ocean, I was intrigued by how smooth as glass the water was reflecting the clouds in the sky. Then the most beautiful, confusing, mesmerizing, and terrifying thing I ever saw happened. The water, for a moment, was so smooth that the horizon disappeared from view."
"The water was so smooth and reflective that it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the sky began. I honestly got dizzy knowing I was in the middle of the ocean floating on water, but my eyes were trying to convince me the ship was floating on nothing. Then the water started slightly rippling and the horizon was visible again. Every morning at sea after that I looked at the horizon hoping it would happen again, but it never did. I've never found out what caused this scientifically. The closest thing I could ever find was it was some sort of variant of the fata morgana mirage."
"I don't think I will ever see anything as beautiful in my life ever again. Words fall extremely short at describing the feeling in that moment."
-- rosso222
So if you were ever thinking about signing up for an extended period of time sailing on the open water, make sure you're prepared to encounter some or all of these bizarre events.
You never know what might happen when you're out there.
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The vastness of the ocean remains an elusive wonder that continues to inspire exploration.
The one time I was certified and immediately went scuba diving in Cozumel, I was blown away by everything I saw while underwater.
All the National Geographic specials and documentaries about the depths of the ocean and its secrets could not have prepared me for what I witnessed firsthand.
I was captivated by all of the innocuous aquatic life that were alien to this nascent diver. I must admit, however, how much the silence creeped me out.
But those who have spent significant hours at sea probably have a whale of a tale – or two – to tell about rare sights and encounters they've witnessed and would chuckle at my amateur observations.
GeneralJagers visited askReddit and encouraged sailors to share their anecdotes by asking:
Floating Boulders
"The first time you see a large sea turtle is kinda strange they look like floating boulders."
"But the sea for as strange as it is is an amazing place as well seeing a flying fish or looking in the water and seeing fish as far as you can see is incredible."
"I saw this quote on one of these once: 'The sea gives and takes in equal measure.'"
– Abyssus_J3
"Blase About Dolphins"
"My absolute favourite thing to see on a four month trip in the Gulf and Indian Ocean was flying fish and a huuuuuuuuuuge Leatherback sea turtle I spotted sunning on the surface one evening."
"Get rather blase about dolphins, don't you? They're not at all a rare sight, especially out that way. Even UK coastal, I can guarantee to see dolphins and porpoises at least a couple times a day."
Curious White Shark
"I worked on a cage-diving boat off South Africa. I saw plenty of incredible things, but one day we had a 5+ meter female white shark come up next to the boat. She was completely uninterested in the cage, the chum, or the baitlines, but just kept hanging around, checking us out. The size of her was just incredible; every time she came back to the surface, my brain would refuse to process what I was seeing for a second. Like 'What IS that? Jesus, it's huge.' She was so calm and curious. For me, it was the first time that I had a clear understanding that there's some kind of intelligence going on in that brain, even if it's completely alien."
– Lamnid
Sphere Of Stars
"I used to be in the Navy, and out in the middle of the ocean at night can be calming and odd at the same time."
"One night, I recall the sea was incredibly flat and calm, even out 1,000 miles from shore. The sky was clear and you could see every star in the sky. The really neat, creepy, and vertigo inducing thing was the stars reflected in the water and it looked like I was standing inside of a sphere of stars."
"It really was incredible but it actually made me a bit dizzy because of the rocking of the ship and the feeling of not really knowing which way was up."
– themeatspin
Sponge
"A dolphin swimming with a sponge in his mouth."
"The crew member I was with asked if I knew why the dolphin has a sponge in his mouth. I didn't know, of course. He said because dolphins have no hands."
– gozba
"So Derpy"
"I was out sailing alone and a couple of huge ocean sunfish came up next to my boat. They are so derpy, but the size of those things up close is pretty shocking."
They're Magical And Some Are Dumba**es
"I've always sailed around Europe, so the first time I came into waters where flying fish are a thing was a trip. I thought I'd seen flying fish before but it turns out those were just jumping fish. Flying fish really do skim over the water really long distances! They're magical."
"And overnight some of the dumba**es end up on your deck and then die there. That's kinda sad."
– 123wtfno
Floating Sanctuary
"Was out boating one day and a harbour seal flops up onto my boat (which was moving at the time, albeit not particularly fast) and displays absolutely no interest in getting off. At first I thought he just didn't want to jump off a moving boat, so I slowed right down, but he still stayed put. Then I thought he was disoriented or something and I got down towards the stern to shoo him away."
"It was then that I noticed that I was being tailed by a pod of orcas, which was presumably the reason why my new guest had made himself at home on my boat. They encircled the boat and stayed there for ~30 minutes, which was both amazing (closest I'd ever been to an orca by far, nevermind a whole pod of them) and somewhat terrifying (the boat I was on was a 20 footer, so reasonably sized, but not so large that I liked my chances of not capsizing if the orcas decided they 'really' wanted their dinner)."
"They eventually lost interest and moved on; the seal hopped off and swam away in the other direction a few minutes later."
– darkknight109
Well, I Otter...
"Left my sailboat anchored off the coast of Saturna island. Go visit friends, spend the night on land. Next day, on my way back, as I'm rowing and getting closer to my boat, I can swear there is a sound coming from my boat. Some sort of small commotion is happening. As I go up my ladder, in ninja mode, I'm trying to figure out wtf...I see 2 otters, laying in a bed of fish carcasses , f'king...on my deck. They haven't noticed me yet and so I do the polite thing and cough a bit. That was not the best idea as they freaked out when they saw me, starting panicking and insuring that the fish guts would get absolutely everywhere in my navigation tools and seats. There was no real damage but I'll never forget the sound of otters f'king."
– Espadajin
Green Phenomenon
"I wouldnt say strange, more just amazing and pretty rare. I saw the green flash one morning while on watch somewhere in the Mediterranean sea. Sea was smooth as glass, sky was gorgeous. I was on the bridge wing drinking my coffee and having a smoke just before sunrise and I happened to be looking at the right spot at the right time as the sun crested the horizon. The smallest brightest flash of green and then the sun started climbing."
– buttmagnuson
Coolest And Most Surreal
"Algae blooms. North Red Sea in 2003. Pitch black night (no moon or cloud cover), except for a billion points of starlight reflecting in the ocean's obsidian. The sea was calm, no whitecaps or even any swells really. I was a Quartermaster in the US Navy and was standing the mid watch (0000-0400 and a Quartermaster or QM is a specialist in nautical navigation for those who aren't well versed in the Navy)."
"So we're transiting the Red Sea headed south toward the Bab-Al Mendeb straight, I'm on the bridge wing shooting stars, and all of a sudden the ocean starts exploding with bright green algae. Starts off in a ball the size of a basketball or volleyball, and very quickly blossomed out hundreds of feet on any direction. Our ship was 505' (154m) long and these blooms were easily encompassing the ship. Bright a** green circles of algae, glowing like you dropped a neon green highlighter under a black light. It happened towards the start of my watch and went on for at least two hours. All around us. Photo-plankton reacts to itself (maybe as a defense mechanism?) and it wasn't just in our wake, or in our immediate vicinity. It was for a couple hundred yards in any direction. To this day it was easily the coolest and most surreal things I've seen on the ocean."
"Other things include millions of dragonflies (Northern Arabian Gulf), a rescue at sea (Virginia coast known in the Navy as the VACAPES), giant manta rays breaching that I almost ran over in the Captian's Gig (Cuba), huge sea turtles at the surface (various places), clearest water I've ever seen (like 100' crystal clear vis, Souda Bay, Crete), and I'm sure a whole host of things I've forgotten. I miss the ocean."
– thebenediction
The sea is a stunning jewel in the cap of Nature's accomplishments. The blue world is a vast and glorious enigma that houses secrets and life. The sea is also a dark and ominous home to danger and death. Many people have travelled miles of the ocean, they work on it and call it home and some of those people are survivors of her fury. Under the sea... not always a place for you and me.
Redditor u/ahelpfuljakeparkmain wanted to hear from the deep sea folk who could write a horror movie about their experiences by asking.... Deep sea Divers, what are your horror stories?Headbutted....
fall slap GIFGiphyI wear contacts so getting water in my mask is extra bad as I cant open my eyes under water. Shortly after being told about a shark colliding with my friend from behind and removing his mask I am pretty scared about this (not sharks in general.) And I see a shark heading for me.
They are curious, they often shoulder bump you as they turn at the last second. But she wasn't changing course. I stayed calm and still as long as I could and at the last second before she hit my mask I ducked. Except instead of ducking under I just headbutted her right in the nose. Everyone saw and thinks it was the funniest thing ever. I may be the only person alive who headbutted an 11foot shark in the nose but it was because I was scared she would take my goggles off.
The Freedive....
Free dove to about 160 ft in Deans Blue hole in the Bahamas. It's where a lot of the free diving world records are set - super neat place, google a picture.
Anyway I'd never really been past 100ft freediving, but this was the perfect place to do it. No current, there's ropes to keep you straight and allow a slight pull back up.
Scary part is that you become pretty strongly negatively buoyant after like 60ft, so you're basically hauling butt down while doing nothing and using very little air. So I'm dazed out a bit feeling good and counting the lines that mark depth and all of a sudden feel pressure like my trachea is going to collapse and wake up and realize I've counted to the line that's around 160 ft or so.
Very scary moment because I wasn't sure if my body could take the depth or if I had gone too far and wouldn't have enough air to get back up, which is a much slower and more air intensive process.
To the Depth....
I got the bends once. I was careful. Followed my charts and my computer. Had appropriate depths and surface time. But I didn't drink enough water so I was all out of whack.
Felt fine until I got home, mild headache. Then I woke up and it was just pain in my left arm. Elbows. fingers.
Couldn't even bend them without bad pain. My headache was intense and I was so dizzy. Called my older more experienced dive buddy and I got rushed to the hospital.
Docs got me hooked up and fluids, checked my dive logs while the decompression chamber was set up. And then got me in there with a nurse.
8 hours in a tube about the length of a car but as wide as maybe a double bed? I was on oxygen and hooked up to an IV and it was so loud, with all the air rushing in. As soon as I got to "depth" the pain vanished. It was crazy.
I'm fine now obviously. But I wasn't allowed to dive for a month which sucked but hey. The dives were pretty great.
Pitch Black....
Saved someone from drowning while SCUBA Diving... person had an epileptic seizure at 85 feet of water in a pitch black cavern that I was diving also. I was hovering above just watching the flashlights move about when I noticed one flashlight not moving, I swam down and was met with the other diver with no regulator in their mouth, eyes open and just on their knees. The divers buddy was next to them and in complete shock to what was going on and was not assisting whatsoever. 15 years of diving and instructor training came over me like it was second nature.
I thought her regulator just came out so I popped mine out and offered it to her, that when I noticed she had done mentally checked out. I popped my #2 regulator in my mouth and attempted to put my #1 regulator in her mouth but her teeth were completely clenched... I then press the purged button to get air into her mouth and noticed her cheeks moving so I know air was getting in there. That was good enough for me, I then grabbed her under her arm and get the regulator flowing in her mouth and swan to the opening of the cavern and then up over 60 feet to get her to the surface.
One on the surface did everything I was trained to do, inflate bc, dumped her weights, got her on her back and started towing to land. As I'm towing her in she is regurgitating all the water she swallowed and inhaled, it seemed like gallons of water. Got her to land where other divers assisted me in getting all her gear off. She was breathing fine and alive but in shock for a while and slowly came around like nothing happened.
We were very lucky that we were only 10 minutes into the dive or for sure we would have both been bent and spending time in a hyperbaric chamber. The crazy thing is she didn't tell anyone she had epilepsy and when we later reviewed her consent form she checked off "no" to epilepsy. I put myself at risk shooting up to the surface like that but if I came across that situation again I would not hesitate to save someone's life.
before the storm....
Diving the day before a hurricane on a small south pacific island. Out of nowhere a black and white sea snake (venomous) wrapped itself around my arm.
Apparently this happens from time to time before major storms- they can sense it and look for things that are heading towards the shore so that they don't have to put in so much effort to get out of the sea. As soon as I was in the shallows it uncurled and headed up the beach where it hid under a breadfruit tree.
I thought I was going to get bitten to death by a snake at sea... Turns out I was just a taxi for a very calm but rather rushed reptile.
Humans for the lost...
The only scare I've had is some jackass in a yacht cruising through our dive location at full throttle. You could hear the boat coming for a solid minute or two before it flew over our heads.
Our boat had a dive flag on it and we had a buoy with a dive flag on it. They didn't even slow down.
Barracuda, sharks, rays, manatees, dolphins... All cool. Humans are way scarier.
The Sea Horse....
My biology teacher told us that she once was swimming in the south of the Philippines because she was trying to find an elusive sea horse and she went quite deep at night when they are more active and she got attacked by a shark and her team got out fast, the next day they found a turtle that was bitten in half shell included that was pretty big and its supposedly the last time she went diving in that area.
Water Diapers
I once had diarrhea at 100 feet. That sucked. It was amazing how warm it made me at depth, but was a nightmare to clean up. I vomited at my own stench (or maybe from the flu).
Edit: Thank you for awarding one of the most truly horrible experiences of my life. Some say everything happens for a reason. I now like to think I endured that literal crap-show (this happened in front of maybe 20 people) so that years later I would be able to entertain a few anonymous strangers.
The Final POV
Not my story but my parents. They like to scuba dive when traveling and have gone several times over the years. Once they visited Mexico and went diving there before I was born. I'm not sure where they were exactly, but my mom was slightly lower down than my dad and looking at the ocean floor. He was looking up and around.
My mom had on a gold necklace that was floating in the water around her, it was a sunny day and a fairly shallow dive so it was sparkling.
From my mom's pov, she was going along having a grand ole time looking at the sea critters below, when suddenly my dad grabbed her and started frantically shaking her arm to get her attention. She looked up and a barracuda was directly in front of her, closer than was comfortable and staring intently, scary teeth on full display.
It was focused on the shiny necklace and was just hovering there, transfixed. She slowly moved up her hand to cover the necklace and they slowly and calmly moved away from it and it took off without bothering them anymore, but still pretty unsettling and taught my mom to be a little more aware of her surroundings when diving.
Stay in the Light...
dark GIFGiphyNight diving is incredibly creepy. You don't realize how dark the ocean is until you are in it.
Searching in St. Thomas....
I forgot to take my silver bracelet off. It had a crystal charm on it. This was in St. Thomas I believe. Anyway, I saw a barracuda and was pretty excited... until it zeroed in on my hand and shot towards me. I quickly covered my bracelet with my other hand when it was close.
It kind of watched me for a few minutes but eventually just swam away. I awkwardly swam back to the boat, still covering my bracelet. And that is why I no longer wear jewelry or even have shiny painted nails when I swim in the ocean. I was a little freaked out by mostly I just laughed at my stupidity.
Under the Sea...
The Byford Dolphin diving bell accident
Long story short, some divers came up from an extremely deep dive at an oil drilling rig, and someone messed up the decompression procedure and opened the door while the chamber was still pressurized at depth.
The four divers were instantly killed, and the one nearest the door literally exploded and they found bits of his body all over the oil rig.
So, next time someone tells you that people don't explode in decompression chambers like you see in the movies... tell them they're wrong.
He was 18, part of the dive club at his school. They went on a diving trip. The crew that handled the dive counted heads wrong and halfway through the dive the boat went back to shore without them... So there they were 2km from shore with their only option to swim back. There were about 5 of them, 2 girls 3 guys. All of them between 15-18 y/o.
About halfway through one of the girls couldn't swim anymore and started crying, my brother along with another guy swam with her, dragging her along, making sure she didn't drown. Everyone made it out ok.
Worst part, school tried to hide it, and had the audacity to suspend my brother from school for catching him with a beer while on the trip. Needless to say they were in deep shit when it came out. Not sure exactly what happened though.
6-8 feet at a time....
Was doing a boat dive and came up to find 20 foot swells. We just had to chill for a while down under until the boat would calm down and we could actually grab the ladder without getting smashed. I remember seeing the ladder going up and down 6-8 feet at a time. I finally grabbed the rope and climbed up as fast as I could. I hung on to the ladder and the boat crew grabbed my BCD and hauled me out of the water and onto the swim step. Half the divers puked on the way back into port. That was the roughest conditions that I have ever been diving in.
Levels of Scary....
It wasn't exactly a deep dive, but it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I was on a beach dive with my parents, having swum from the beach out to a small reef and then descending. It was only a few minutes after getting down to the reef that something started going on with my parents. My mother was agitated and clutching her chest. We surfaced and she started spitting up dark liquid and struggling to breathe.
Fortunately, it was a busy beach and after we inflated an emergency buoy, lifeguards rushed out and carried her back to the shore where an ambulance waited. It turned out she'd had swimmers edema induced by the greater pressure. Things turned out fine, but having a medical emergency underwater in the ocean is a specially level of scary.
In the New Year!
Happy Birthday Reaction GIFGiphyI did a shipwreck night dive on New Year's Eve one year, and it was spooky as hell. 80 ft down, really small plane.
Visibility was obviously not great (I've only done this one night dive), so these slow moving fish would come looming out of the dark.
Scarier to me was getting back on the boat, because it got really stormy. You'd be looking UP at the ladder, and it'd come crashing down right next to you. The waves were crazy. My brother got hit by the ladder, but not too badly, and we all managed to get back ok.
Through the lens....
I wear heavy prescription lenses and can't wear contact lenses. Halfway through a week long live aboard dive trip, someone dropped a tank on my prescription mask and shattered it. I usually had a second set with me, but could not find them and only brought one, because hey, nothing had ever happened before.
I am functionally blind without corrective lenses; I can see colors and that's about it, starting about five inches from my face. I was devastated, but decided to go diving anyway, with my husband as my seeing-eye diver. I could see my gauges, so I felt reasonably safe.
It was among the most amazing three days of diving I've ever had. I saw the colors, shapes, and movement. Without being focused on the details, I actually took many of the best underwater photos I'd ever taken. I wasn't worried about focusing on a particular coral or fish; I was looking at the larger color patterns.
So it didn't turn out to be the disaster I'd thought it was.
Let me Count the Ways....
Honestly the things that really scare me, makes my heart run fast etc are two:
- If my air consumption looks funky suggesting a leak or the current is suddenly fast - basically anything that COULD lead to a life-threatening issue due to running out of air. When you're deep, you can't just fly back up and be fine...
- Hurting reefs. Like honestly if my hand brushes against one (even dead) or gets super close so the dust unsettles because of the current or something I feel so, so, so guilty. Wit-wat-4
Lung Issues....
Only thing that really scares me is lung expansion injuries. So the one time I was freaked out was swimming near a wreck at about 100ft. I lost perspective (and buoyancy control) and suddenly realized I had surfaced about 40ft in 30s or less. Visions of the bends and a popped lung instantly came to mind and dropped a ton of air from my BC to get back to depth in a hurry.
Got a massive squeeze from it in my ears, but it gave me a chance to calm the hell down and get a better sense of where I was and reestablish buoyancy control.
Bottom line - the scariest things that can happen while driving is the thing you can do to yourself.
A Florida Story....
GIF by MashableGiphyI was diving in the early 90's off the coast of Florida. I had been using a spearfish ineffectually for a few minutes when I heard a strange grinding noise to my right. I turned my head to see an enormous set of barracuda jaws grinding just inches from my face. I still recall the fish's eye rotating around to check me out as if considering it should take a bite or not.
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Being out on the open ocean is not something many people get to experience, but if you do it tends to be one of those things that changes the way you view the world.
The rules of "normal" kind of go out the window. It's not an environment humans are accustomed to, and so even the most mundane things can seem entirely surreal.
One reddit user asked:
Mariners of Reddit, what's the strangest thing you've seen out on the open ocean?
and ok ... maybe surreal was an understatement. Some of these sound outright unnerving. Except the last one. We're pretty sure that last story is about interrupting God's fishing trip and God just trying to play it cool after getting busted.
Edgy
I have only spent about 2 months on the water, with about 2 weeks on the Great Lakes. But even just a couple miles off shore in the Atlantic when it's a foggy and calm night I totally get what sailors talk about when they say "sailing off the edge" sometimes it looks like the water just stops and there's nothing after it.
Who?
An Owl. 300 miles offshore. I hoped it would stay with us or get close enough to catch, but it flew off into open water. Lots of land birds get stuck at sea, sometimes they accidentally fall asleep on a ship and wake up in the middle of the ocean and try to find land again. Some get blown out from storms. They eventually drink too much salt water and die. The smaller ones get eaten by seagulls. It's sad.
Praying
GiphyWe were at least 5 days away from land and our ship was covered bow to stern in praying mantis. Not truly the weirdest thing ever, but after not seeing much life for a few weeks it was an experience for sure.
Lightning Strikes Twice
One time on the coast I saw a massive storm stretching as far as you could see, which is of course very far when you have nothing obstructing your view.
There was lightning everywhere I cant put it into words, every city was probably getting a lightning strike per minute, but from my point of view with this massive panoramic view, there must have been 10 bolts of lightning per second, sustained over at least an hour, absolutely mesmerizing
Like any good mariner, I grabbed my cigarettes, and did the ol' one foot on the railing and watched.
Ballet In The Bay
Whales doing ballet in the bay. Hilarious to watch such a massive and heavy beast come flying out of the water over and over again like it's just playing, meanwhile it's big enough to just crush me instantly.
Every Other Human In History
GiphyFather used to sail yachts for rich bastards across the Atlantic so they could have it in their Mediterranean and Florida houses depending on the time of year. His first time he got to truly see an open, starry night, and says he was appalled that it was so unusual to him, and because we're all living in cities everyone's missing out on that kind of natural beauty that almost every other human in history would've had access to.
Baldius Manius
In Slovenia, whilst on our research vessel, we saw a pale and bald thing almost emerge from the sea, it looked incredibly humanoid (as in its head was poking above sea level, with a thin layer of water over its head).
It was there for a split second, and we assumed it was a diver trying to scare us. Lo and behold, we carried out a biodiversity assessment in that very area and found nothing apart from some smaller fish. But no man. There was nobody there.
To this day, me and my marine biology professors have no idea what it was, or how it got there (I was majoring in marine biology at the time).
Our first assumption was a juvenile whale. However we were in relatively shallow waters, where these species tend not to congregate. Furthermore, if it was a calf, there should have been a much larger mother (which none of us ever saw).
We named this species as baldus manius.
An Orange Flower
I was on the helms of a ship in the South China sea in late 2018. It was just before dark when one of the stars expanded from a dot to a flower shaped orange thing that rotated very slowly. That thing was there for the whole night.
Everybody the on the bridge was wondering what the heck it was. It was not larger than the size of my thumbnail with my arm stretched out, but it was so distinct and eye catching.
Probably an astronomical or meteorological phenomenon.
The Void
Solo night watch on a sailboat delivery. New moon (when the moon can't be seen) with overcast skies that covered the stars.
The strangeness wasn't what I could see but rather what I couldn't.
Total silence on a broad reach, surfing down long unbroken swells. No light in the sky, almost no perceived movement, just 4 hours of nothingness. Occasionally a wavelet would crest and reflect the light of the navigation light and cast a pale green flash that was the only reminder that I was on the ocean and not cast into an endless void. It was the most unsettling experience I've ever had.
A Man With No Boat
Was motoring through hurricane Irene (captaining a 32' charter catamaran) between Anegada and Jost Van Dyke in open water many miles from any coast/harbor....and stumbled upon a local man with NO BOAT doing "deep sea spear fishing."
Dude had a 4x1.5 foot Rubbermaid container attached to 2 bouys filled to the brim with ice and fish. Probably at least 300 lbs of deep sea catches (before gutting). And all he had was a rudimentary, blacksmithed, iron spear rigged with silicone tubing on a stick for the propulsion.
We were probably 13-15 nautical miles off any shore/harbor...winds were insane, at least 45-50 mph...waves were between 15'-17' in the open sea, prob 20'-25' on shore...dude didn't seem to have any sort of boat/canoe.....looked to us like he swam out with a few bouys and nets and just got to fishin and didn't notice the hurricane lol.
He had obviously been spear fishing these waters his whole life, I mean the amount of fish this guy had speared was unimaginable... literally a massive pile of fish. It was impressive.
Why the F are you spear fishing in the open ocean during a hurricane, and how the F did you spear all those you wizard?!?!?!
We scooped him up, gave him a ride, and then enjoyed an enormous bounty of fresh deep sea fish with the fellow. He must have given us 20-25 lbs of his catch when we scooped him and gave him a ride to Jost Van Dyke.
He looked pretty normal for a BVI native besides his mohawk hairstyle. Kinda skinny, in his 20s, super fit, of west African complexion, and spoke the local language as well as English with a thick islander accent. He was a very respectful and cool dude, helped us a lot.
Saw the dude later on, getting off his dingy at Pusser's bar with plenty of fresh catches for the tourists. He loaded us up with fish and drank with us that night...let us in on a few "secret local diving/fishing spots." Dude was chill, poured us some of his homebrew rum and open fire grilled us some local chicken.
Asked us to cover his bar tab at the bar as "payment" and went on his way.
We ended up scoring some good footage and fish on his recommendations. Ended up giving a lot of our catch away or trading for other goods cuz there was just too much for our freezer.
Was a great trip all in all. Never did learn his name.
- Jsmoke91