Your strange nautical encounters?

Has anybody here had an encounter of the nautical variety that they would like to share?

Have you ever seen a sea monster, or maybe a mermaid?

Or maybe you were diving one day and encountered a shoal of fish that was behaving in a way that you could not explain?

Did a dolphin read your mind, or a lobster warn you of an impending shark attack?

What strange stories of underwater creatures do you have?

a reply to: AaarghZombies

Loving these threads! I don't have any underwater creatures to talk about, but maybe an overwater spook!

My extended family enjoy living "on the lake" various lakes around the province, secluded locations with lots of privacy and too many black flies.

One of my aunts had a small cabin on an island on a huge lake. Her particular cabin was very secluded, but at either end of the lake, there are lots of other cabins. Everyone is friendly, everyone has a boat, and everyone travels around visiting, day and night.

One night, a cousin and I were staying at the cabin, and the generator was running one bare lightbulb above where we were playing cards. Our Aunt and Uncle were out at a party. We heard a boat coming down the lake, and out the window could see the light at the front of the boat (a small green and red light), but no spot lights. It was pretty dark, so we figured whoever was bringing our relatives home had also tied one on. We started walking down the bank to the boat dock, anticipating having to help the drunks up the rocky steps.

As we got closer, we could kind of see the outline of a boat, and hear it knocking against the dock. But everything else was totally silent. No voices, no more engine noise. We got to the dock, (about 16 feet long), and the light blinked out. We got a little closer...and nothing was there at all. Nothing.

Terrifying in an exhilarating way.

Our Aunt and Uncle got back the next morning and seemed freaked out. They called around to some neighbours, and another also thought they heard a boat dock at their cabin, but there was no one there when they checked, and being... not 17... it didn't really phase them, lol.

After that, we weren't allowed to stay at the cabin without the doors locked.

When I was in the Navy I would be up all night doing repairs. Other than the one red light I had it was pitch black. It can seem pretty spooky. Nothing but black and the up and down left and right. I would sometimes see the bioluminescence of algae in the ship's wake. Sometimes see a faint glow under the water. It was hard to tell if I was really seeing thing or just seeing things due to my lack of sleep.

I remember one time our whole ship shook with a violence as if we had been hit by something or had hit something. The strange thing is that combat control hadn't seen what it was. Nothing had shown up on our sonar or radar, but we had lost some mobility. We pulled into port and discovered that one of our props had been severely damaged.

Once when we were doing some mag sprink maintenance one of our hoses was acting as if it were blocked. We couldn't figure it out. We checked all the valves, made sure some engineer wasn't messing with us, and were left scratching our heads. One of the Gunner's Mates decided to do what they do best and started prying out the mesh filter at the end of the hose, and about the time I told him that he should move his face out of the way he got blasted with the foulest black liquid.

But over all of that I think my strangest nautical encounter was a game the sailors liked to call "gay chicken."

a reply to: AaarghZombies

We have a holiday home on an Island which lies just off the mainland Coast of West Central Scotland.
It's just a small (one bedroom) flat (apartment) but it's a great place for short breaks and weekends "away".

One time, during the night there, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.
I didn't want to disturb my wife, so I decided to go out for a walk and see if I could tire myself out.
It was around 4am on a very still, silent and very dark night, with not a breath of wind.
I had only been walking for about 5mins when I heard, what sounded to me at the time like... a Whale's song!

Our holiday place is right on the beach, and I had walked uphill (away from the water) about 100M (300feet) when I heard it. I immediately stopped walking, and turned to face the water... ears on alert... and I heard it again!
It was amazing, very clear and quite loud on such a still and quiet night.
I started walking back down towards the beach area to see if I could see anything, but it was really pitch black looking out to sea and there was nothing to be seen.

I heard the sound one more time but much fainter (as if it was heading away from me) and then complete silence again for at least 10-15mins before I got cold and decided to head back indoors.

It was only a few days later, when talking to a Marine Biologist about it, that I found out that you can't actually hear Whale Song from out of the water without a hydrophone or similar device!
That spooked me a bit, because Whale song is about the only thing that I can think of which sounds like what I heard that night. It was definitely out to sea, and definitely got fainter like it was heading away, but if it wasn't whale song then... what could it have been?
(There are seals in the area, but I've never heard them make any sounds that are even remotely close to this.)

regards,
G

a reply to: AaarghZombies

Did a dolphin read your mind

If a dolphin could read my mind it’d probably hold me on the bottom till I drowned.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

I was vacationing in Ft. Myers Florida. We were right on the beach. It was getting late and the sun was starting to go down.
I was just floating in shallow water. There were two adult dolphins and a baby dolphin. I swear they were showing off their baby to me. I don't know any other way to put it. They were so close to me, jumping in and out of the water. I just watched in awe. It was beautiful.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Ok, now that was indeed very cool.

a reply to: Atsbhct

That sounds both cool and spooky at the same time. Its like something right at the beginning of a horror movie.

originally posted by: AaarghZombies

........ or a lobster warn you of an impending shark attack?

No Lobster perse' but a distant freshwater cousin, a Crayfish that sometimes can get bigger than your hand.

I was Gold mining in about 9-10 feet underwater and working around a large stretch of a boulder pile. With some of these rocks the size of Mini Coopers (my best guesstimate). We were trying to get below the bottom shelf/row with the plan to come up as close as we could underneath to the heavy build up.

Since it was a lower pressure zone (below the raging river), it was surreal as it was perfectly calm below this boulder field. It also had become a habitat near a semi buried rotting tree for 100's of large Crawdad's to our right.


And they were very curious with what we were doing. Pulling up rocks and relocating them was also kicking up grubs and dead 'whatevers', so we had some happy fans. We were worried that they might start getting too close and we didn't want to suck up one with our dredge, so we dredged up an area near their rotting trees and it was a grub and Helgamite feast!


So I've been working for about 25-30 minutes and just ready to pop open what we thought was a key large boulder (near Mini Cooper sized). I was quite exhilarated that all this hard work was about to pay off.

Unknown to me one of our curious little friends had climbed up my suit and was now taking a breather (or maybe a better look at me) right on my Diving mask. Well this startled me and to be honest, scared the beejezus out of me for a moment and I jumped backwards swiping my friend off my face.

No sooner had I done that when that area I was working right in front of me collapsed. I would've been crushed or in the least trapped and my buddy had gone topside for a smoke.


So my life was saved by a Crawdad.. and I honestly believe that.
Johnny

Gar creep me out, floating up out of nowhere in a green haze like they do, is that strange enough?

originally posted by: underwerks
a reply to: AaarghZombies

Did a dolphin read your mind

If a dolphin could read my mind it’d probably hold me on the bottom till I drowned.

Well, yes. but to be honest that would be true with a lot of people. Dolphins are well known for their hatred of people who wear boxers.

originally posted by: AaarghZombies
Has anybody here had an encounter of the nautical variety that they would like to share?

Have you ever seen a sea monster, or maybe a mermaid?

Or maybe you were diving one day and encountered a shoal of fish that was behaving in a way that you could not explain?

Did a dolphin read your mind, or a lobster warn you of an impending shark attack?

What strange stories of underwater creatures do you have?

I've seen a few oddities from time to time but your post made me think of a particular passage in the book "Kon Tiki". It's an amazing read if you haven't read it. Truly the embodiment of human exploration.

Anyway...Thor Heyerdahl reported that while they were in the middle of the ocean each night they would be visited by "sea monsters" that glowed. I'm paraphrasing here but he wrote that these sea monsters were much larger than his raft and they would stay just under the surface. His raft was 45 feet long. I don't know of any sea creature larger than 45 feet that glows at night. Could be they were in a bio luminescence bloom but according to him the creatures themselves glowed.

Anyway...thought I would share. Great book. Read it !

originally posted by: 1point92AU

I've seen a few oddities from time to time but your post made me think of a particular passage in the book "Kon Tiki". It's an amazing read if you haven't read it. Truly the embodiment of human exploration.

Kon Tiki was one of my Father's favorite reads... I bet he read it at least 10 or 11 times (that I knew of), great classic book.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

I've shared this encounter before in some other OP years ago.

I was diving, from a boat, spearfishing if you like, decades ago. I was in an area of deep clear water called 'The Boulders'. The boulders were basically white/grey (granite, i think) and were stacked up off the tip of a small island and sank away to the blue depths. Between some of these boulders was the occasional small cavity. (body size) And that's where I was hunting. I'd poke my head in, eyes would adjust to the darkness and I'd poke through the schools of small fish perhaps to get hold of a larger one.

The day in the water had progressed well because me and my mate had delivered a quantity of quality seafood to the crew line fishing in the boat anchored not far from us.

From memory, kinda went like this. Put my head into a small cave. See little fish, nothing special, move on.

Well, I went a little deeper to get to this grotto. I ventured in. About top half body size. No little fish. Just darkness. I turned my body around looking upwards, if you like. Eyes adjusted to darkness.

Looked straight into a pair of bigger eyes, tentacles and a beak.

You can swear underwater but nobody will hear you.

Pulled myself out and started back paddling to the surface. This creature emerged. It was the biggest 'cuttlefish' you could imagine. Mentioning it's size here would seem like BS. Maybe it was the mask and water depth that made me think it was bigger than me. These crafty buggers can go forward as well as backwards and have these 2 longer tentacles for gripping as well as all the others for latching on. The ends of the 'grip tentacles' seem to be a flat diamond shape to me.

But, as quick as I'd like to think myself to be, those longer tentacles had latched to one of my flippers. The creature then pulled it's body towards me and the other smaller tentacles wrapped around the foot of the flipper. In went the beak, luckily through the fin of the flipper, and sure enough this fn thing started pumping and squirting water trying to go backwards. Kinda like a fish tugging on a fishing line.

So, this is all taking place in a matter of seconds. It was like a wrenching weight.

Looking up I saw the surface, looking down I could only see a shape. Somewhere I had dropped the speargun out of sheer panic. Using my arms and my other leg, imagining this 'thing' had punctured my foot. I surfaced. Got a bead on the boat. Pulled my mouth piece out and squealed, like a girl,(sorry ladies I'm old school) "hey, hey." I rolled onto my back and started one legged peddling towards the boat.

I was only a couple of meters from the boat when the weight lightened. Looking at back my foot I saw, I swear to god, a tentacle rise out of the water. A high pitched squealing, "Nooooo!" (I blame it on the tight wet suit around my balls) is such a terrible word to gurgle in the water. Then nothing, in the way of something releasing it's hold on me. My flipper (fin) had come off from my foot. A second later, I'm on the floor of the small tinny (Aluminium boat). I hear my mate say, "what is, that?"

His recollection is of a large shape, on the surface, appearing to devour the filipper/fin. It then went south into the depths.


Me, "Fk Fk Fk, never diving again."



So if you see one of these in the depths. And it's big, you got a speargun, just shoot the bugger.

My story,

Kind regards,

Bally

a reply to: bally001

Crazy! I believe ya though. I'm not afraid of much, but deep water is one thing I'm weary of. Especially the kind ya can't see through. Just don't know what's in there, and everything that can eat me is faster and stronger.