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.”
We were off of Point Conception one night at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. Me and a buddy of mine were on watch and talking to stay awake. He was steering and I was leaning against the doghouse looking aft at him. We talking about something or other when all of a sudden it became daylight. Bright Daylight. All I remember were the saucers of his eyes looking back at me to say, “WTF”!! I imagined I looked the same to him because I was absolutely shocked.
Then in about 2 seconds, the light faded to the horizon on our right, and we witnessed a rocket taking off from Vandenburg Air force Base. We watched it ascend into the night sky, and once we saw that it had jettisoned it’s first stage, we started to joke nervously about the odds of it landing on us.
It didn’t, and me and my buddy will always remember those 3-4 minutes as one of the most singular experiences we’ve ever had. We had fun telling the rest of the crew about it the next day. They were pissed that they missed it.
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.
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.”
EDIT: We knew the age because we were told beforehand that there was a large 100 year old turtle in the area. We weren’t expecting anything as big as we saw, however.
It literally hit me, and then floundered around the boat for a few seconds before I picked it up and hurled it back. Those things are goddamned weird. It’s wings were gross.
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.”
After getting back to shore, I learned that it was a retired japanese satellite re entering the atmosphere.
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 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
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!
Was fishing at night of the coast of Norway in the 70s I believe when a call came on radio (Worth nothing its was an open secret all the radio operators on the trawlers worked for the government and also had sonar equipment to listen for USSR Subs) to evacuate a 100 or so mile area and if the trawlers could not get there nets up in time to GTFO then they should just cut them free (Which is a very expensive thing to do when you have dozens of miles of nets out in the water). On the way out my granddads trawler and other trawlers in the area saw a massive white flash on the horizon.
After returning to Hull it was discovered a ship called the Gaul had never returned and had lost all radio contact around time of this flash. Fast forward 20 or so years later and the wreckage of the Gaul was discovered and officially sank because of a waste flow pipe being overwhelmed by a massive wave that flooded the lower compartments of the ship and sent her to the bottom. Rather interestingly there was no human remains found on or near the ship nor any equipment food bedding etc and all the windows had been blown outwards along with a hole about 3m across through the middle of the ship with all the metal work being twisted upwards towards the sky. My granddad always insisted up to his death that the sea that night was as still as a pond and that his radio operator was fairly sure the GTFO warning came from the Gaul. As well around the time of the Gauls sinking 16 unknown graves were created and filled in Murmansk, Russia.
Another one of his favourite story’s was that one day the engine for hauling in the nets was redlining and came very close to exploding so had to be shut off as they assumed the nets had got stuck on the bottom. A few minutes later a Soviet sub surfaced behind them with the nets stuck to the periscope complete with a bunch of very pissed off soviet sailors armed with guns who unhooked the nets and disappeared back under the water. It was a known tactic that soviet subs tried to sit under the trawlers and use them as cover to get out into the Atlantic hence a lot of the ships having government paid radio operators on board.
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.
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.
First one was on our trip in the Florida keys, we were maybe 30 miles offshore, no land or other vessels in sight. We were hauling a** away from some a quickly approaching storm cloud when I saw a funnel cloud appear. It was kind of eerie being an 8 year old and seeing this s**t a few thousand feet behind you, knowing that if it got close enough to us and we didn’t make it, no one would ever know for a long time and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Another time, when I was about ten, we were trolling for fish 40miles or so off the coast of bimini (bahamas) and this large lump floated within a few feet of our boat. It was a dead sea turtle, a pretty big one too. We gaffed it, flipped it over in the water, and there was a huge baseball sized hole through its underside, and it went all the way through its body until it reached its shell area. It was like a neat cylinder had been carved out of its body, and it looked flat black. I don’t know if it was just rotting, but it almost looked charred. Turtle also had numerous hooks and cut lines coming out of its mouth, which is pretty normal for dead ones. We set it loose, still no idea what happened to it.
This last story I thought I had dreamt or something until I asked my dad about it recently and he confirmed it. I was around the same age as my last two stories, and we were offshore fishing for mahi pretty much all day. I don’t remember if we were on the gulf side or Atlantic side, but the water was seriously deep and blue. We must have been many miles offshore and looking at the sonar I remember it being much deeper than 2000 feet. Anyway, about midday, bored 10 year old me was sitting on the roof of our center console, and I see this dark shape about 20 feet under the surface. It was seriously huge and definitely not a whale or anything. It was man-made, a gigantic a** submarine, and it was RIGHT next to our boat. Like 20 feet away. It stayed next to us for about 60 seconds, then submerged slowly and went on its way. It was so creepy seeing it out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and knowing that there were people right inside of it.
1985, night time, full moon, off a popular fishing spot called East Point in Darwin, NT. My sister and i are in a decent sized canoe and have paddled out about two k’s or so..i’m an idiot trying to half scare her and be brave at the same time. Something bumps the bottoms of the boat, a gradual slow rasp. Hairs all up, s******g bricks. Over the side all we can see is a massive shadow, like one side to the other of the canoe. Fins come out of the water either side of the canoe..panic and paddling ensues, my sis is screaming. I can’t, i’m the big bro, but my a** was tightly clenched and i was white with fear. We made it back to shore unscathed and found out it was a Manta Ray
Another time a mate and i swam to a sand bar which took us a good ten minutes to swim to directly out from the beach. We stayed there until the water started coming over our thighs and then bailed back towards land. A minute into the swim back and we spot a decent sized Remora swimming near us..all i could think off was how f*****g big is the shark/crocodile/godzilla it had detached from. The rest of the swim was total fear on my behalf.
Then there was the time when my gf got bitten by a bait fish protecting it eggs at our local swimming hole..
Staring down at the calm dark waters and listening to the old guys talk, I couldn’t help but imagine the corpses drifting up from the depths and surfacing all around our boat. Imagined seeing the fuselage’s silhouette in the fog. Creeped myself out.
His theory was since they didnt have a proper sat radio they weren’t aware they were being hailed to identify. The american navy was probably like wtf is this and kept track of them or even followed them for days/weeks. At the end the americans were probably even more curious, surfaced, saw a bewildered sun burnt french sailing couple, cursed and went back to doing whatever they were supposed to be doing
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.
One of his buddies was trawling off the BC coast back in the 80’s, when he snagged something with his net. Despite being under power, whatever he had started towing his boat backwards at about 7 knots. He eventually had to cut his nets with an axe or be dragged out to sea. Probably not godzilla though, locals guess it was a US or Soviet sub being sneaky.
Another fellow trawled up a 2000 year old greek amphorae. (In deep water not far from Tofino.) Museums offered him a bunch for it, but he keep dried flowers in it instead.
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