The ocean is a mysterious place as so much of it is still unexplored because it is so vast and goes down so deep that it is very dark, cold and the pressure is crushing. Maybe the uncertainty about what is down there makes people a bit nervous when they are in the middle of the ocean even if the water is calm and they can’t hear anything.

But it’s not always just calm and those who regularly venture out further from the shore witness various things. People had many stories to tell when redditor icefalls asked “Dear Deep Sea Fishers of Reddit, What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen / heard on the open ocean?” In addition to fishers, Navy officers, divers, swimmers, sailors and people who have boats and like to sail also shared what surprised them or scared them.

More info: Reddit

• Read More: 30 Of The Most Creepy Or Weird Things People Witnessed In Oceans, As Shared In This Online Group

#1

I had a friend who would go deep sea fishing and stay out at sea for days at a time. He told me that at times he would hear some of the most bizarre, unearthly noises ever out there at night and assured me that there must be things out there we have no idea of.

Considering we apparently know more about what’s on the moon than we know about what’s in our own oceans, I’m inclined to agree with him.

Image credits: [deleted]

#2

I do a lot of night fishing off of SC and FL. I get a lot of fish that are bitten in half by sharks. Some of them had to have been very, very large. When you reel in a large sportfish’s head like some kind of sequel to the old man and the sea and realize the shark is close to half the size of your boat miles and miles offshore, essentially in the middle of nowhere, you get more than a little freaked out.

Image credits: thewaybaseballgo

#3

I had a friend who was stranded in a rowboat for a couple of days. He got pretty dehydrated, and later told us of these wild hallucinations of beautiful female water spirits encouraging him to join them in the water. It was strange because he was one of those no-nonsense guys who didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he said these things were so real to him.

Image credits: Aiku

#4

A friend’s cousin is a tuna fisherman. They found a deer swimming over 100 miles off the coast of New Zealand a few years ago.

Image credits: ShelSilverstain

#5

I was fishing off the coast of malaysia in the middle of the night. Suddenly, the night sky brightened and I saw a bright glowing orb appear to the bow. The orb moved slowly across the sky, leaving a bright yellow trail and seemed to have sparks coming off it for about 20 seconds before disappearing into the night.

After getting back to shore, I learned that it was a retired japanese satellite re entering the atmosphere.

Image credits: LostTheGame42

#6

We were out at night once, with our lights off because we were admiring a field of bioluminecent stuff that was just stretching for miles around us. Really freaky looking but neat… right up until a shadow twice the size of our boat started coming right towards us….

Image credits: Random-Miser

#7

one was an abandoned boat floating past us in the night

Image credits: tkp67

#8

Not deep sea but fishing. About 10 years ago now I was fishing at Coles bay, Australia, there were 4 of us in the ~14ft aluminium boat that day.

We were bottom fishing for flathead in the bay when the weather started cutting up, not wanting to give up so early we decided to do one more drift in near the beach. We were in shallow enough water that you could almost see the bottom.

Quiet fishing occurs for a few minutes when suddenly my rod almost bends completely in two and the line snaps. The same thing happens to my uncle to the right of me. Thinking we’re hitting rocks and snagging, my grandad tell my cousin to pull his line up.

Something bites, he manages to pull it up for one or two winds before his line snaps, just enough to pull this things shadow into view.

It was the shadow of a massive sting ray, almost as long as the boat and wide enough to darken the waters around us.

We all went completely silent and watched it swim away. Never seen anything like it before or since. We checked later and the water was only ~15-20ft deep there.

Image credits: CastleNation

#9

I’m a marine biologist, while at uni I went out to the deep ocean on a scientific cruise. We were trawling about 800 m. Pulled up the catch. I found a hermit crab. What was cool about this was it wasnt in a mollusc shell but was in a hard anemone. The anemone had a bottom part that was hard and hollow perfectly fitted for the crab. On top was two clusters of stingers. It was an awesome little symbiotic relationship in which the anemone gave the hermit crab shelter and protection and the crab presumably moved the anemone to food. Anyway, I tagged and bagged it for another scientist to look at. I never followed what happened with it. I tried to search if it had been discovered. I couldn’t find anything. It could have been a unique discovery.

Image credits: heri0n

#10

I don’t fish but when I was in the Navy we parked the ship over the Marianas trench with is like 5 miles deep, and went swimming, I did not see anything but in my mind!!! It’s freaky swimming in water that deep..

Image credits: BiPolarBulls

#11

I dive in the open ocean at night a lot while leading something called a blackwater dive. I have seen all sorts of strange life, but certainly one of the creepier encounters (cookie cutter sharks, larval fish, strange squids, schools of mola) was when I watched a spotted dolphin hit a squid and take off. Drifting down from the site of attack was this bright shiny thing. As I looked closer, I realized it was the squid’s eyeball that popped out in the attack, starting on a journey sinking 6000 feet below us.

Image credits: Smellzlikefish

#12

I went deep sea fishing last summer. I don’t have an insanely terrifying story or anything, but I have a couple that may entertain. Both happened on the same trip

The first story is that at one point, a teaser line got caught up in the prop shaft. No big deal, the captain (my friends dad) turns off the motors and then a couple of us dive in with goggles. At this point, we were 40-50 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, water depth 150-200 feet. We have a kitchen knife and are trying to cut this insanely tough fishing line off of a circular metal shaft. Being in the water, noticing how clear and blue it was, gave me a sense of awe, but at the same time a sense of fear. I knew that the water was as clear as a swimming pool, yet I still couldn’t see the bottom. I couldn’t see anything, really, except a gorgeous shade of blue. After a bit, my other buddy wanted to help out with the tangled mess, so I got out and gave him my goggles. While down there, the two guys noticed remoras swimming beneath.

Getting sucked into by one is inadvisable. Basically, the remora began to swim at my friends, so they just got the hell out of there, and the line was already well enough taken care of anyway.

Second story is less intimidating. We had 4 lines out, and one in the middle popped out of the outrigger. The line started flying, and I mean flying out of the reel. My friends and I rushed to pick up the rod so we could land this apparently massive hunk of sea meat, but the line snapped before we even got to the rod. To this day, I’m not 100% sure what sort of fish that was, although my suspicions are that it was a gargantuan king fish

Image credits: Quest4Queso

#13

I do quite a bit of saltwater fishing, and any time I’m on a chartered boat, I ALWAYS ask this question to the captain.

On a blackfin tuna trip out of Key West three years ago, I asked the question, and without thinking…or blinking really, the captain said “A dead elephant in the middle of the ocean.”

I’ll never forget that. Same captain also told me that while tied behind a shrimp boat not far offshore, his client pulled up a large grouper with a human knee joint (and muscle/flesh) inside its mouth. They went back to shore, and contacted the appropriate authorities to let them know a shrimper had possibly dismembered someone and tossed them into the ocean. Weird stuff.

Image credits: howtocookawolf

#14

I have been out in the open ocean (no land or other boats around) and the sea was perfectly calm on a clear day. Our boat was only small and it was not moving at all – it was perfectly still, there was no wind, the water surface looked like glass. It was eerie and slightly disturbing. Only comfort was I was not alone and we were not a sailboat.

Image credits: 3rd_in_line

#15

While on a sailing cruise returning to Miami from the Bahamas I was permitted to pilot the boat while the crew sat down for dinner. I was told to simply follow a certain heading on the compass. As we were going along I noticed the position of the sun was rather rapidly changing as I was chasing the heading on the compass. I returned to what I thought was the correct heading and watched in amazement as the compass began to spin in circles. We had been scuba diving so several of us had compasses and they were all exhibiting the same behavior. The heading on the GPS was unaffected.. After maybe 10-20 seconds the spin slowed to a stop back on the correct heading. The crew logged the coordinates of the anomaly. The best guess we had was that we’d crossed over an old shipwreck, perhaps something hauling a large amount of some magnetic metal over to the Bahamas.

Image credits: nlderek

#16

I was on a dive boat off the coast of the Big Island in Hawaii last week. It was after dark and a pod of dolphins was spending a lot of time playing around off our stern. They were pretty interested in us it seemed since every once in a while you could see a head pop up and just sort of look at us for a few seconds.

Pretty much everyone was hanging out on the dive platform on the stern when suddenly this huge manta ray comes right up to the surface about five feet away from the boat. It was easily 10 ft. wide. It did a quick flip and was gone in a few seconds. It wasn’t too freaky as we’d been night diving with them a few nights before that. But I could see how someone who wasn’t aware of them would get really freaked out. The ocean has a lot of weird stuff in it.

Image credits: bg-j38

#17

Out off Bermuda back in the 80s or early 90s we saw a huge piece of rocket fuselage or aeroplane floating vertically 5-6 feet out of the water. It was out in the Gulf Stream and was moving quite quickly. This was before Internet so we never knew what it was part of.

Image credits: ZincII

#18

I was about 40 miles off the coast of the carolinas, and see a watermelon bobbing along in the water next to the boat. So random.

Image credits: rusty_L_shackleford

#19

Not a deep sea fisherman, but I was in the Navy. We were a few hours off the coast of Thailand, I was in the hangar bay of the carrier for morning muster and there were trees floating in the ocean. like they had been cut down and thrown in, bobbing right side up with their bare branches sticking out of the water. It was really weird to me.

Image credits: nukethor

#20

Back in the 80s I was in the Bahamas, where the water is crystal clear to the bottom and pretty shallow. We were going spearfishing, and had a spotter plane locating the spot, I was on a boat on the bow spotting coral reefs so we would not crash. The plane tips its wings and we find the spot, I look down and there is a World War 2 fighter plane sitting on the sand about 30 feet down. It was surreal. We got in the water with our Hawaiian slings, and attached the boat anchor to one of the wings. The boat pulled the wing up and hundreds of these lobster like creatures scattered across the sea floor, but they had no claws. I snagged about 3 of them and had them for dinner that night.

Image credits: stanfan114

#21

I do a lot of fishing at night, the weirdest things I’ve seen / caught are the greater hammerhead sharks. They look downright creepy in person at night.

Image credits: skull145

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