30 Of The Most Unusual, Most Mysterious, Or Just Weird Things Seafarers Ever Experienced During Their Journeys

While at sea we were on our way home from a “West Pac” (we went to the gulf, our marines disembarked and participated in OIF). On the way home, we were between Hawaii and San Diego. A marine was by the trash drop off, stripped down to his green shirt and shorts and jumped overboard. He was witnessed jumping so they immediately called for a man overboard. My dept was responsible for some SAR coordination so we are all gathered around a scope and listening to the radios. After two hours the helicopter spotted the guy, alive. They sent in rescue swimmers. Then we hear the pilot say something along the lines of “he’s swimming away from the rescue swimmer(s)!”

The fact that this guy was chilling out to sea and still had the stamina (I assume he was great at floating) to swim away from the rescue swimmers, was amazing to me.

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”

I suppose it was strange because my captain said he’d never seen it in all his years at sea.

It was a massive tuna that breached like it was a dolphin.

Fishing offshore in S Florida, dolphin/porpoise are not unusual but usually in schools of 5 or so. One day we came across hundreds and hundreds, in small pods of 5-7 but pods everywhere over what would be blocks. Cool as s**t. We stopped trolling and just stayed with them briefly. All around our boat, checking us out, which isn't unusual. Everywhere. Going north.

I’ve only been out a few times on my ship in the US Coast Guard, but seeing countries from a distance never gets old to me. Haiti, Cuba, Turks and Caicos, etc. A random fish popping out of the open ocean. Sunsets and sunrises spent outside on watch.

The Panama Canal and Gatun Lake are among the most impressive and beautiful things I have ever seen.

Also, handmade Cuban migrant rafts. Heartbreaking work, but the ingenuity and resourcefulness of those people amazes me. To set out on the open ocean on a boat made of pallets and styrofoam is something else. Safety of life at sea is one of our biggest reasons for interdiction.

Dead calm, glass-like water and low cloud. So perfectly flat water and no discernible features or horizon, almost pure silence too, it's weird, so weird

Was in the US NAVY on lookout. Around 2 in the morning somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. I spotted a strange plane that was pink and blue flashing lights. These are not normal colors of plane lights. Control insisted it was a satellite because they couldn't see it on the radar. Wasn't no damned satellite. It was much bigger than any stars around it, the usual size of a plane in atmosphere. Or some kind of rocket maybe?

After a few minutes, it disappeared. No, I don't believe in aliens but we weren't near any sort of landmass for hundreds of miles.

I'm telling my partner's story. He is an Atlabtic Ocean winter fisherman. He says the most unsettling thing that has happened to him was experiencing the doldrums in winter with fog so thick you can barely see the ocean that is just a few feet over the side of the boat.

They are in a 40 ft boat, so easily creamed by any tankers out there. Heavy fog rolls over them and everything just stops. No wind. Barely a ripple in the water. And they just sat there watching their radars and whatnot to make sure they weren't in anyone's path and just waited for the fog to lift and the air to keep moving.

Another creepy one is a friend had a man over board. They were able to hook the guy's clothes with a gaffe and where dragging him back on board. Remember, this is winter in the Atlantic ocean, the boat had to turn around to come alongside the man overboard. He had been in the freezing water long enough that he couldn't move limbs. The gaffe broke and the man fell back into the water. Due to the water in his coveralls and boots, they say he immediately sunk like a rock. In an almost instant he was gone. Couldn't see him. Couldn't bring his body home to his family.

Commercial fishing, I saw a dolphin giving birth with another holding her up, an oil rig being delivered that was so tall, it disappeared in the clouds, and a seemingly empty cargo ship almost ran us over. The nastiest thing I ever saw was a man dressed in a nightgown tied to a bow in a storm for whining.

I had also never seen a real tuna fish or goliath grouper. They're as big as Volkswagons.

Volunteering to help search for survivors when the Swiss Air plane crash of “98. Grim s**t, still gives me nightmares.