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

Many stories in this list have to do with people getting scared of big and dangerous fish like manta rays or sharks. So Bored Panda reached out to Les Kaufman, a professor of biology at Boston University whose areas of interest include marine biology, evolutionary ecology, and conservation biology, to ask how often do sea animals actually attack people. 

He says that happens very rarely. The professor shares that he knows just one scientist who was attacked by a leopard seal in Antarctica while snorkelling. He also adds “Shark attacks on divers do happen on rare occasions but are usually provoked. More a specialty of surfers.”

Dr. Les Kaufman gets into more details of why he specifically mentions surfers, “Surfers paddling out to catch a wave can, seen from below, be mistaken for a seal by a great white shark.” But he also says that a shark quickly realises its mistake, “after one experimental bite they most often realise the error in that there isn’t much blubber on the intended prey, and they let go. They also do this with their prey so they bleed to death and weaken.  Unfortunately, once the shark realises the mistake it may be too late for the person.”

Other than that sharks don’t attack people unprovoked and that the white shark attacking surfers is an unusual exception as most often animals “have no difficulty distinguishing people from other wildlife.”

Most people are really afraid of sharks but the professor notes that there is really no reason for that and that in general animal creatures are not that dangerous to people as they don’t see them as food, “Very few shark species will attack a human as prey. Even then, it is rare statistically, and there are many ways to avoid becoming a statistic. Other than sharks and leopard seals, there aren’t many animals that people in the ocean need to fear. Leopard seals you can only encounter near Antarctica. The unlikelihood of being attacked by a shark is driven home by the fact that whether you see them or not, they are usually around, decidedly not attacking people.”

The marine biologist also points out a depressing fact, “There are many fewer sharks than there used to be, however, because people have attacked them mercilessly for millenia.” So if we would just look at the numbers, sharks should fear people a lot more than people fear sharks as the professor put it, people “are really dangerous and have been known to regularly attack unprovoked.”

As mentioned before, the majority of the ocean is unexplored and there is quite a big chance that people sailing through the ocean and going swimming in the middle of nowhere might have seen sea creatures that are generally unknown.

Dr. Les Kaufman confirms that and tells us “I’ve seen this happen myself. Many fish species are still not known as distinct from their close relatives.”

The uncertainty of the ocean is the factor that draws some people in and leads others away. But it doesn’t matter what category you put yourself in, it is always interesting to read through some strange and creepy stories from the comfort and safety of your own home.

We would like to know which of these stories you found the strangest so let us know by upovoting them and if you have any of your own, we would like to hear them in the comments!