Surfers - Sailors - What's the Weirdest Thing you ever Saw in the Ocean?

Black kids swimming

You're welcome, its actually quite enjoyable recounting these events...



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The green flash in the Indian Ocean and phosflourecent algae

Give us more

Just a turd floating in the water. But keep the stories coming, between this, the strange things you have seen in the woods, and the strange things you have seen in the city, they are all fascinating threads!!

Last late summer, surfing in North Orange County CA,

I was 50-75 yards out from the shore, sitting in the lineup waiting for waves and a GIANT gray whale breached between me and the shore in shallow water. He was probably only 30-40 yards from shore. He slowly swam thru, weaving in and out of surfers and swimmers, turned around and came back. It was a weekend, and there were a lot of people in the water. Everyone in the lineup immediately started pointing and making comments. Many mentioned they had never seen anything like it. Incredible to see something like this so close in person. He was absolutely massive. Had moss and crustacean-like things on him. That's the craziest thing I've seen in the water.

Many other times I've had run-in's with dolphins, They love to catch waves, and many times they will put on a show, flying and flipping out of the water. A few times I've thought I was going to collide with them while surfing. They are super friendly and social. If you whistle at them or clap the water, they will often come near you. One time there was a pod of 5 or 6 dolphins and I swam up to one of them to get a closer look thinking he'd probably swim off, I literally could have reached out and touched him, but he startled me as he lunged forward at me, I kinda freaked out and quickly turned around. He probably got a chuckle out of it.

I've seen Risso's dolphins too, which are weird looking, kinda snub nose dolphins with white faces. They are bigger than normal dolphins, and have really large dorsal fins shaped differently than your typical dolphin, which can make your alarm bells go off at first site, but then you realize it's not a shark.

I've seen many unidentified dorsal fins breach the water, not knowing if they were sharks or dolphins. Sometimes you only catch a glimpse of one, and you can't tell. Or sometimes it's swimming right at your and you can't see the profile shape, which can be a scary moment. Saw a couple sharks cruising slowly in Nicaragua when I was surfing, I got a little flustered (nearly shit myself) but my friend assured me they were nurse sharks, which come to find out they are common down there.

Can't say I have ever had the money to snorkel or do activities in the oceans, however seeing a documentary on very deep sea marine life was beyond words, I mean there was one of a fish that is completely transparent and several others that can conduct their own electricity and change colors, simply amazing.

The ocean is as mysterious as our skies and space, as their is still so much to explore and we are just now barely scratching the surface of things

a star gazer...what a fucked up looking dude

Were these quoted orgone comments from this thread? I dont remember reading them... deleted?

This has to be the same whale I saw! ^^

Aboard a US destroyer in the late 90's..........

+dolphins swimming alongs side on stern and bow numerous times.

+off/near Indonesia I witnessed a pirate submarine/boat painted black and showing several antennas and, like the civil war Monitor, 90% submerged.

+off/near Mexico/Guatemalan coasts a floating body, most likely from flooding up one of the Guatemalan rivers. We circled it for 8 hours then handed the patrol/responsibility off to Mexican Navy.

+in Hong Kong harbor, fisherman deliberately putting their boats on the way of US Navy vessels in order to get new equipment/boat.

And from some poor Mexican fisherman's perspective......

+we "accidentally" came within 400-500 yards of him - 3am lights out and moving right along - sure we completely freaked him out.

Your wife?

I wrote the comments about Dr Reich, but it was in another thread. Not a clue how they ended up here.

Alrighty then....


While sailing through the south Pacific its amazing at night when you are ploughing through phosphorescence, the tiny sea creatures that give off a bright green glow when they are disturbed, swimming through them is surreal and sometimes at anchor we used to piss off the side of the boat and write our names in them, shit load of fun when you've had a few rums and coconut milk....LOL! Anyway, on one passage we started to sail through this phosphorescence, only they weren't tiny creatures, they were as big as dinner plates! the light show was nothing less than outstanding, it was like a huge disco or a major pink floyd concert! only saw that one time, never again since.

On the passage from Tahiti to Panama we sailed through a big school of large squid, only to our astonishment they were flying squid!!?? As we disturbed them they would take off flying and when they hit the deck or us, they would discharge their ink sacks, so after a while the whole boat was covered, as well as us, in jet black squid ink! it was funny at first, then it was like...okay, thats enough, were over that now, however, you can guess what was on the menu for that evening :) Also flying fish was a problem sometimes, more than once i was smacked in the face by one, they're yummy too...never did see the flying squid again though.

One time we were about three days out of Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands heading for Fiji when we got caught in a Typhoon, it was a famous storm called "the Queens birthday storm" (QE2) 5th June 1994, quite a few people died in it just south of us near Tonga, it came out of nowhere and caught everyone by surprise, we knew there was something wrong when all of a sudden it got pretty cold, bearing in mind that in those areas you can wear shorts and Tshirt in the open cockpit at 4am and still feel comfortable, then this massive halo formed around the full moon (ice particles) never seen one as big or more defined before or since, then the wind started to build....we started gradually to reef in the sails (make them smaller) as the wind built up, then whammo! we got the full force of it, everything was going sideways, rain and sea spray hitting you in the face like nails from a nail gun, i was on the wheel and because the force of the rain and spray was so strong i had to steer by touch, feeling my way with the waves (which you couldn't see) and the wind...we still had a small amount of sail up at the front, the roller furled genoa, we had took down the mainsail and the staysail completely, when boom! the 3/8 stainless steel bolts on the roller furling drum sheared off because of the wind pressure on that little bit of sail and we ended up with the whole genoa (big sail at the front) unfurling on us! shit man! i was fighting, almost blind trying not to fill it with wind, otherwise it could have dismasted us! the sail was whipping and cracking like crazy, the only thing to do was to get the bastard down, my two buddies Stan and Rene went forward to claw it down and i watched them disappear through the spray as they went forward, no harnesses, lifejackets or anything, not that the life jackets would have been any good, if they had gone overboard there would have been zero chance of recovering them anyway in that shitstorm, as they went forward i remember thinking to myself, "thats the last time i'm going to see them again" and what am i going to do next when after they had gone? and what surprised me was the matter of fact way i thought about it.

Thankfully and amazingly they managed to get it down and drag it back to the cockpit were we threw it down below and carried on our merry way, by this time we were doing about sixteen knots on bare poles, (no sails) surfing down massive waves on the diagonal, steering mostly by touch and virtually blind, i think the fastest we had gone in the boat was about nine knots before this with full sail! Anyway, the storm lasted about eight hours, battling all the time with it until it finally blew over us, i had never been so exhausted in my whole life!

We had been thrown off course completely by this time and the wind was still strong and in the wrong direction for Fiji so we ended up sailing to Vanuatu where we landed about four days later, there we licked our wounds, and waited for some parts to arrive from American Samoa, we spent about two months in Vanuatu then Fiji after that, an uneventful trip i am happy to say!

What did stick with me though was the way i felt.. very matter of factly, everything seemed like it was in slow motion, no fear at all and my movements were all very mechanical, i figured this is what it must be like when we think of soldiers "going over the top" into murderous machine gun fire in the first world war, and wonder how in the hell they can do it?!, or soldiers in combat where they take out machine gun nests single handedly, i reckon they must go into a similar mode as what i experienced, you just get on with it...It must hark back to our primeval days when we had to take down giant wild oxen, bears or sabre tooth tigers and without this mechanism at work that i experienced, that we all must possess, i guess we would have been toast.


Thats all for now folks, i do enjoy my sea stories though, thanks for the encore!



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great thread!

Not necessarily weird but really cool..
Surfing in San Diego before a big rain back in 2001ish. The weather was getting heavy and dark and the surf was picking up.

A few friends and I were trading off waves at a local spot and as I was dropping into a wave going left out in front of me were 3 dolphins. All 3 of them were surfing the wave with me. At first it startles you when you see a giant creature but then you realize how intelligent they are.
They were making eye contact with us and splashing around in the impact zone then they'd swim back out to the lineup and catch the waves with us.
We rode waves with dolphins in the rain for about 20 minutes before it got dark, but it was one of the most unique and mind opening experiences I've ever had.

Was sailing from the UK to the USA a few years back, and about half way we saw something weird in the water. It turned out to be a dead giraffe! To this day we have no idea how a giraffe would have gotten that far via the currents etc, and we never heard of any missing giraffes being transported to or from the USA.

It had been bleached pretty badly by the sun etc, and some chunks had been eaten by fish we suppose, but the head and neck were still intact enough to let us i.d. it. And no, we didn't even think to take a photo at the time.

30 to 40 foot Estuarine 100+ miles out in the ocean. Probably hunting sharks...

A manta ray the size of a large truck jump completely out of ocean. Lots of garbage bags floating in middle of Alantic.

Thai basket show

it wasnt in the ocean.

at the ocean though.

Estuarine?

Crocodile?

30-40 ft??

Are you fucking retarded?

I'm scared to google image search Estuarine..

It's another name for Saltwater Crocodile... and that poster shouldn't do acid while sailing.

Had a similar experience down in SD myself...

Was out at Black's on a foggy morning nothing but glass and had a pack of dolphins playing in the surf with us for an hour it seemed, it was an awesome morning I'll never forget. The fog was so thick you couldn't see shore out in the lineup, waves were 5-6 glass ... first backside cover up I ever got ... it was like a video game that morning ... perfect!!!

There was another time we were snorkeling off of La Jolla Cove down in San Diego. Cool little spot with a couple caves to swim through just south of the Children's Pool. You mostly see Girabaldi, seals, starfish, bass ... anyhow the shelf drops off extremely deep not too far off shore, I was following an octopus out near the edge and all of sudden this massive black shadow is coming towards me, took everything thing I had not to panic ... turns out it was manta ray had to be 7-8 ft across it's wingtips, so I started following it wanting to rub my hand down it's back as I got within about 2-3 ft of it I realized the pressure in my head and realized I had to be 30-40 ft deep following this manta ray off the ledge into the abyss and had to surface. by the time I reached air I had to have been down at least 2 1/2 minutes ... was surreal!!!

When I was in the Navy 1978-81, on a destroyer, once it ran over a whale that came up under the ship. It was crazy trying to sleep when you could feel the vibrations of the screws coming out of the water on a ship over 700 feet long. Was neat to see a German ship in Guantonimo Bay and talk to some of them. In Naples Italy seeing condoms floating in the bay, probaly why I just drank wine in Italy. Was neat to see whales and flying fish. Liked Niece France, to bad I didnt know I had French ancestors.

cool story bro