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It makes sense that quite a few people have a fear of deep, dark, open waters. Plenty of creepy crawlers lurk beneath the surface of our oceans, lakes, and seas, and the thought of that alone gives me the chills.

But if that doesn’t faze you, we prepared a whole list of unsettling things that people witnessed while working at sea. Scroll down to find them below, and be sure to share your own unexpected open water discoveries in the comments.

While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out a conversation with a marine biologist, education expert, and conservationist, Melissa Cristina Márquez, who kindly agreed to share some things about her profession and the mysterious open waters.

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#1

400 metre container ship doing night rounds in the engine room gets awfully eerie. Ships creak and make a lot of weird noises and when you’re alone down there in a big cathedral of machinery you start seeing and imagining weird things. So one day I’m just finishing up and I’m about to open a door when the wheel suddenly flies around and it bursts open revealing a ghostly apparition in the passageway which lunges towards me.

Anyway the next day I’m in front of the captain explaining why I punched the 3rd engineer because he had been sleeping in the duty cabin and wandered down to raid the control room fridge wrapped in the bed duvet.

Spooky stuff.

#2

Maybe it’s just me but on still clear nights the stars are above you in the sky then they are reflected beneath you in the water and you lose the horizon and you are floating in space you can lose yourself in that place.

#3

My sister worked on a commercial fishing boat in the Bering Sea. The captain would often get drunk and one night she could hear the girlfriend screaming as if she was being attacked. My sister was armed and charged in and literally mutinied the captain. They called for the coast guard who took him into custody.

My sister still has PTSD from it. With no backup and close quarters, it was really a dangerous situation but I am proud of her.

Marine biologist, science education expert, and conservationist Melissa Cristina Márquez tells Bored Panda that her curiosity about the unknown led her to the exploration of open waters.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the unknown, and the ocean is one of the last great frontiers on our planet. My interest really took hold when I realized how many questions remain unanswered about the creatures that call it home, especially sharks. That curiosity led me to become a marine biologist and science communicator focused on sharing the wonders of the open sea,” she shares.

#4

The only time I was ever on a ship was actually a cargo ship and it was for a program for my business class. Basically you got to shadow several people and see a products full journey. Like I started at a farm, went to a trucking depot, then a dry goods wear house, then a cargo yard, then finally a cargo ship to China (can’t get off the ship when it gets there so that was the end), then catch a ride back on another cargo ship. Trip was very informative. The creepy thing tho was it’s 6am and the ship blades it’s horn. We are out somewhere in the pacific and then slows down over the next 20 minutes. I made my way up to the guy that was doing the program and he’s talking to the captain and the captain is clearly pretty freaked out. This is the absolute middle of no where and there’s a tiny coral island with no trees or vegetation just a [darn] load of birds…… and a cargo container next to a tent. The ship is hardly moving at this point and the captain calls out over a mega phone to see if anyone is there. After a minute a guy who’s clean shaven but wearing clothes worn to rags island a deep deep tan wobbles out of the cargo container. Captain yells out if the guy needs help. He says something but they can’t hear it. A guy volunteered to go out to him on an inflatable boat. He climbs down the rope, gets on the boat, meanwhile the guy is just sitting on a bucket. He goes all the way over within 20ft of the guy. They talk for a few minutes and he comes back. Climbs the ladder, and goes to the captain. Captain asks what the guys said.

Guy goes “he said he’s good”

Guy gave no info, no plans, had no food but dried fish and some water distilling thing, is out 100s of miles from another living person, has no boat, and says “I’m good”.

#5

I work on a deepwater drilling rig. We use a remote operated sub for all of our subsea work. We are commonly in 6-8,000’ of water. The things I’ve seen from the subsea video is wild. Like sea creatures I’ve never seen before in books. It’s crazy to see what lives in water that deep.

#6

So it’s actually pretty common. But you’ll see ‘ghost vessels’ boats that are undamaged but have no souls on board. In the middle and I mean MIDDLE of the sea.

The reason for these tend to be pretty dull, they are normally people private boats they’ve had bad weather and snapped their lines and just drifted.

Still is creepy when one goes past in the middle of the night hundreds of miles from land.

What she enjoys most about her profession is the fact that no two days are the same. “One day I might be in the field tagging sharks, the next I’m talking to students or writing about new discoveries, and the next I’m diving deep into shark folklore centuries old. I love that my work lets me connect people to the ocean and spark a sense of wonder and stewardship.”

#7

Down in the Caribbean, there was a 90 ft commercial fishing vessel sitting on top of a 100’ cliff where it had been tossed like a tubby toy during a hurricane. Hurricanes don’t [darn] around. .

#8

You’ll expect otherwise, but I’ve seen more people drown that I would consider reasonable. It’s always the same cycle. People get overconfident and don’t bother wearing protection (PPE). then one day someone slips and falls to the water, survival depends on the weather. Port reacts like a beehive. Suddenly, everyone is hyper aware of PPE, but one month later, everyone has forgotten, and no one wants to bother with the tedious process of properly fitting a life jacket… until someone falls again later and we repeat the loop.

#9

A drinking buddy of mine has been a commercial fisherman for years. One day I asked him what was the creepiest thing he ever pulled up in his nets. His answer: “a woman’s hand, cut off at the wrist, with her wedding set still on her finger.”.

As Melissa already mentioned, the open waters are surrounded by mystery, so we were curious to know what, in her opinion, people might not realize or get wrong about our oceans and seas.

“Most people don’t realize how connected everything is out there. What happens in one part of the ocean can ripple across the globe, whether it’s a change in temperature, a shift in currents, or the migration of animals. It’s a giant, dynamic system! Beautiful, but also fragile.”

#10

We had crocodiles and sharks circling our boat at the same time while we were processing the fish and throwing the guts overboard. That wasnt necessarily creepy but was definitely exhilirating. Captain said he’s seen the crocs wait between the dinghy and the main boat to snap you when you hop onto the dinghy.

Tropical seas are a whole different beast. Everything in that water is dangerous in some way.

Edit: was in northern Australian coastal waters since several people asked.

#11

Having to rescue crew members in the engine room after a steam pipe burst during cleaning. Seeing your coworkers’ flesh melt before your very eyes as you desperately try to get them out of there. The screams and the smell.

#12

Out of sight of land when the water suddenly went glass-smooth as the sun was setting, and a crew member got floor psychosis and was fighting to step off the back swim deck onto the “floor” ie the surface of the ocean he was convinced was actually land. He had to be handcuffed to a bunk and forcefed valium and we turned back to drop him off to the nearest port while he screamed about how the boat wan’t real. If he had bolted even a few seconds earlier he would have likely died.

“People often think of the open ocean as empty or lifeless, just vast blue nothingness. But it’s actually teeming with life, much of it invisible to the naked eye,” she adds.

“From microscopic plankton to massive whales, it’s a buzzing hub of activity. Just because we can’t always see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

#13

My dad was fishing in his wee speed boat off Vancouver island. He decided to travel out over the ocean to try his luck far away from his usual run. He was at it for a few hours when suddenly in his peripheral vision he spotted what he thought was an old man,bobbing up from behind his boat. He turned abruptly but the man was gone. He stared around the near ocean surface for a minute hoping to never see him again, when gurgling up from the depths appeared the biggest grey faced sea lion he has ever seen.

#14

I had a humpback whale surface on the side of the Race Yacht I was delivering up east coast Australia. I rub along him and it caused $100k in gelcoat damage. He blew his blowhole and I got covered in whale snot… Well stink water anyway.

#15

My father was in the navy in the late 70s. His carrier was traveling through the Bermuda Triangle, heading for the Mediterranean. He was on the flight deck one night when all power on the ship suddenly died. Even people’s watches stopped working, apparently. About this time he and other sailors noticed two lights in the distance, unmoving and about one hundred feet above the water. The lights were visible for several minutes before they disappeared. My father didn’t see them disappear, but others swore they saw the lights quickly descend into the water. In any case, after the lights disappeared, the power returned to the ship.

My father doesn’t believe in UFOs, stories about the Bermuda Triangle, or anything else supernatural (well, he *does* wish that Bigfoot was real lol), but to this day he has no explanation for what happened. All he knows is that in those few minutes he experienced a strange sense of “accepted dread” that he’s never felt before or since.

There was a time where I thought he was just bullsh**ting us kids (even though he isn’t that kind of guy), but when I was a teen he had a mini reunion with some of his old navy buddies and they talked about it, even getting into a debate about whether it was aliens or some sort of secret military tech being tested.

Lastly, before signing off, Melissa wanted to remind people that we protect what we understand. “The more we learn about the open ocean, the more we realize how vital it is. Not just for marine life but for human life too. I hope readers walk away with a bit more awe and a bit more motivation to help safeguard it.”

#16

Response to the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

The debris fields of people’s lives washed out to sea. Roof’s of houses, sheds, furniture, picture frames, over turned boats, everyday items, just adrift. Knowing that over 15000 people were washed out to sea.

Eerie.

#17

We used to have to sound the fuel tanks on the Coast Guard cutter I was on. That involved going out to the decks and inserting a tape measure into tanks. If we did it at night with a flashlight, sometimes a flying fish, which were attracted to light, would jump out and smack us in the face.

That was jarring.

#18

Was on a large ferry in the middle of a cyclone, waves were washing over top of the third deck. All crew and passengers were in life jackets just in case, not that it would have done much good at point if we’d had to abandon ship.

Waves ended up breaking some windows and the lower decks got a pretty good soaking. But other than a few scrapes and bruises and brown stains we made it to port.

#19

As a 20 year old woman I had to try to ward off sexual advances from 60+ year old men who were my bosses.

#20

You have never experienced darkness until you youre out at sea. I can only explain it by saying complete BLACKNESS.

#21

Out tuna fishing about 170 miles off the oregon coast one night, had shut down and was just about to go to bed, noticed an odd glowing orb the size of a football down in the water. Thought it was a bioluminescent jellyfish until it started moving, no swimming motion just slowly cruising around the boat, had a million candlepower spotlight on board so brought it out to see what it might be, but when I put the light on it it fully disappeared, turn the lights off and there it was, plain as day. A few more showed up and moved around the boat for about 20 minutes, never saw a trace of what they were in the light but but my crewman and I were seeing the same thing. They eventually left and we went to bed, my crewman was an old salty dog, sailed from Vancouver island to the South Pacific and back single handed twice, worked on many tuna boats all over the pacific, said he’d never seen anything like it.

#22

When I flew for the Coast Guard a couple of years ago in the Caribbean, we detected a small open boat on Radar. It measured no more than 3 meters in length.

We flew towards it and eventually picked it up with our optics. Zooming in we saw two or more very decomposed bodies in the boat. We looked up the faded registration after our return to base and discovered the boat was a local fishing boat registered in western Africa that had been missing for a few months. It was smack in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. Eventually, a cutter was tasked to collect the boat and tow it back, but it was decided to scuttle it.

#23

Was traveling through bab al mandeb. The sun had set about an hour before when all of a sudden we picked up 4 speedboats pacing us on radar with no running lights and there was no moon so it was dark. We top out at 20 knots. They sped to us at around 35-45 and came within 6nm before leaving us be. The atmosphere on board completely changed. The old man got called to the bridge and we were getting ready to call it in when they turned away and let us be. I was aboard the maersk Carolina which is a sister ship to the maersk Alabama and on the same route which got taken a year or two later. We had no armed security on board. .

#24

Rogue waves freak me out quite a bit, never got to see them (worked in engineering) but I remember we got slapped by one beam-to at like 3am and it almost threw me out of my rack, knocked a bunch of s**t off that wasn’t strapped down, almost broke our TV, and then it went right back to being pretty calm out. Everyone in my room woke up, nobody got hurt, but we all juat stared at each other like “[why?] did that just happen?”.

#25

My grandfather worked as a Navy cook and he flat out refused to eat shrimp, crab and any bottom feeder after working at the sea. He always said that whenever something dies, they’re the first to start scavenging. It made me wonder what exactly he saw getting eaten by them that made him so viscerally sickened by the idea of eating any of their kind.

#26

US Navy Cruiser – while inspecting a compartment called “the pitsword” as part of sounding and security. It’s a compartment all the way at the bottom of the ship that has water in it to measure ship speed. Only accessible through climbing a ladderwell straight down 5 stories. Anyways, I had a shipmate swear he had his leg grabbed by something as he was climbing out, and it scared the h**l out of him.

I figured it was just an old sailors tale, and he was trying to scare us newbies. Nope, that compartment was haunted as [darn].

I was in the pitsword one night and bent over to look at the water level, and something grabbed my a*s so hard I almost fell into the water. I was convinced it was a shipmate hiding down there trying to play the ultimate prank, but after frantically looking under every nook and cranny in that compartment for about 10 minutes, I found nobody.

So I’m standing there realizing a h***y sailors ghost just coped a feel in the afterlife. I hated going down there after that.

#27

Not me but my husband always talks about the time he was a deck hand on a NOAA research boat when he was young and spry. One time while on station in the Antarctic Circle with a cable 1000s of feet in the water, their boat listed/rolled 42 degrees. Fortunately, no one went overboard or was injured. Makes my b******e pucker just thinking about it.

#28

Not me but my uncle worked on a cargo ship. One night, middle of the Indian Ocean, they see a small light moving in circles. No radar signal, no boat. Just a light. Every time they turned, the light followed. It vanished after 3 hours. No explanation.

10 grown men refused to go on night shift for a week.

#29

I worked on a dive boat that took customers out for the weekend. Someone has to pick up the lights after the night dive.

I’ve been alone on the sea floor 100 miles offshore in 100 ft of water with just some flashlights and a 19 cuft spare tank. It’s creepy to “hear” the stuff that isn’t in your light cone.

Also dozens of barracuda in a school when I dove off the sundeck (dove as in diving board type dive, not scuba). Went about 20 ft below surface surrounded by them.

We would also occasionally spearfish for lionfish under the rigs and make ceviche. I had my trap full and 2 on the spear with a nurse shark chasing me back to the boat.

I miss that job.

edit: I had a regular tank as well but no buddy, just the spare pony bottle.

#30

Not me but a guy I worked with. He was dive harvesting in an area where a boat had gone down recently. People were lost.
As he moved along the bottom, he saw ahead what looked like the shape of a man in oil slick rain gear.

Reluctantly, he moved ahead.

As he got closer, he saw the bib pants, boots, and jacket laid out on the ocean floor as if a man was just lying there.

Preparing himself for the worst, he came within touching distance and…

They were empty.

#31

I worked on a scallop boat and someone dredged up a half decomposed shark.

That was the day I learned that a half decomposed sharks head looks concerningly like a human torso at first glance, the snout had rotted away to resemble a pelvis, and the way the gills were exposed looked completely like a set of ribs from a distance.

It was great relieving to see that it wasn’t, but on that same trip I heard some crewmates talking about the boat they knew discovering a human head and being investigated thoroughly after coming to Port.

#32

Besides the odd whale breaching, the horrible realisation that there’s no 5G or wifi the next 4 weeks crossing an ocean is mind boggling.

After a while you even start talking to your other crewmembers, creepy stuff. Nightmare material.

#33

Not a worker, but when I was younger my family took a trip to the Florida gulf. A couple cousins and I went deep sea fishing about 20/30 miles off the coast. I got horrendously seasick and was bench ridden the whole time and was taking a nap. When I finally woke up a storm had started to roll in. I remember looking out at the back of the boat and seeing the sky turning an ominous dark grey and the water just turned BLACK. The waves were starting to get pretty intense and the captain was all “alright we really need to get back before this gets to a point where we can’t”. I never liked open water and that experience just made it all the worse.

#34

Nothing creepy happened. That’s the point. It’s the implication that something might happen.

#35

Heavy Seas during a storm on the flight deck. when you see real waves and feel how insignificant you are in the ocean makes for a surreal experience. One wrong step and there is literally no rescue . Now imagine you need to be along the side of the ship pulling up heavy metal fences while the ship is bouncing around like a spring board up and down , side to side all at the same time. oil slicked tarmac glides like butter so you better pray you got the right boots on. Not going to lie I had to tap out momentarily and readjust my nut sack before I went out again. It was definitely a experience man. It’s creepy because after one lift off you wait around for the next sortie and you can feel the ship getting thrown around crashing reverberations through the flight hangar and residual oil from prior pre-flight maintenance that you are almost always going to walk into.

#36

Another one. USS McInerney off the coast of Eduador somewhere.

Our helo was out looking for d**g boats so we are all on the flight deck getting some sun, fishing or generally not doing anything.

Suddenly the ships engines stop and everything shuts down. Good thing it was smooth as glass that day.

About 20 minutes later I notice the helo doing the “lost comms” signaling.

It wasnt just the engines that died. It was EVERYTNING!

#37

Does fishing count as working?

My Dad and I were fishing and thought we saw a sea turtle with its head sticking out of the water. My Dad told me to get our camera out (back in the 90’s) and I was ready to take the shot – as we got in range we realized it was a body floating belly up arms straight up in the air.

Poor guy was fishing a few days before with friends when a storm blew in capsized his boat in the Long Island sound (anchor off the back next to engine with waves hitting the front – flipped it) didn’t get his life jacket on in time. His three friends made it to shore, he did not.

We drove back to the marina (radio wasn’t working that day) and reported it. A few other boats had also reported and they were in the process of recovering the body.

#38

I was working in a pearl boat for around 18 months on the Arafura Sea a few years ago and one of my roles was “keeping watch” in the wheelhouse. Essentially you make sure the boat is following the pre set path on the navigation and if it strays you turn in manually to keep it within the course set.

My watch was 4-8am. About 7am I noticed a white cube perhaps 200m port side (hard to say with no point of reference) but it didn’t show up on the nav/radar system we had that let you plot/recognise boats. It was also not bobbing up and down with the waves, it was just sat there on the waterline in the distance.

I got a better look at it with the binoculars and it was so strange seeing this white cube just sat still there on the sea in the distance. It wasn’t really hovering above it but as the waves moved with the ocean every now and again I could see the bottom of it which is how I know it was a cube. Again it’s hard to say without a point of reference at sea but I’m guessing it was the size of a van – I’m purely going off how big things appear in the binoculars when looking at things I do know how big they are.

The person who was following my shift came to drop me a coffee and he saw it too so I know it wasn’t just me being tired.

Following this a few years later I saw when the tic-tac videos came out from the pentagon and some of the fighter pilots said they saw five shaped objects floating in the sky.

#39

The sailing vessel I captained was continuously bestruck by a great white whale, with an unusual spout, a deformed jaw, three punctures in his right fluke and several harpoons embedded in his side. We chased the great beast for three days and nights.

#40

When I was in the Navy, we were just off the coast of Italy at midnight. It was dark night, and you couldn’t see any lights from the shore at all, no stars. At some point we passed a long boat, basically an extended rowboat. It had no superstructure or anything. It had a light on. Ships captain told us that that was a guy fishing, and the light would attract fish or whatever.

So yes, whoever it was was in a completely exposed boat about 10 or 12 miles offshore in a completely dark night. And they had a light on to attract things.

#41

We sailed the suez, i was working on a cruise ship,

the crew was paid more to do “pirate watch”

we watched the sea with simple night vision stuff all night, this was say ten years ago….

the wealthy “guests” might have paid “1-3 %” more for the cruise, but they expected the entire crew to die battling pirates so they “wouldnt have to get up out of their chair”

the mindset was so sick, they wanted you to die for them but they also wanted to witness it or else they had not gotten value for money.

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