Strange Phenomena at Sea

While I was in the Navy, I was stationed in Japan for 3 1/2 years, and while I was over there, my ship had to be out at sea roughly about 300 days out of the year. So while I spent an awful lot of time at sea, I was fortunate enough to see some pretty bizarre stuff.

The first neat thing I saw was Photo-illuminescent algae, which is actually quite common to see if you have ever been on the ocean at night. I used to be able to see this on a very dark night, I would go outside and look over the safety rail of the ship and watch the waves crashing off of the side of the ship. This would disturb the algae which would make it light up with a bright blue flash. I never got tired of watching this because it reminded me of a lightening storm, except this was taking place in the dark cold waves beneath my feet.

The second thing I saw, or more accurately, things I saw was a lot of interesting things in the sky. Being on a ship in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles away from any land one can find a rare chance to see the most beautiful night sky. On land, in a city, there is way too much light pollution that makes it very hard to see the stars but out at see, on a cloudless night, with no moon out, I could see just about every star in the sky. I could even actually see the haze of the milky way! On other clear nights I was lucky enough to see satellites tumbling across the sky, and every once in a while they would give off a bright flash when they turned just the right way to reflect light from the sun.

I got to see tons of meteors fall from the sky. Once off of the coast of Australia, I saw a meteor fall from the sky then sharply swoop back upward and explode with a bright flash. I still have no idea how that was possible, but I know damn well that it was not a plane, it all happened way too fast.

I once saw a "corona" which is what happens when there is a full moon, and there are high altitude clouds filled with ice crystals that act as a prism to the moon light and form a perfect rainbow ring around the moon.

And lastly for now, I'll end after this because if I don't, I'll be typing forever; was when I was in the Indian Ocean, it was about 3 AM and I was on watch. I decided to step outside for some fresh air and to my amazement I saw a field of orbs of glowing green lights floating in the water, surrounding my ship stretching out as far as the eye can see. These orbs of light were just a few feet away from one another and they were all blinking, but not just randomly. The entire ocean of light would blink in waves as a whole. It looked like the orbs of light were creating swells in the ocean of light and shadow. I heard they most likely were jelly fish but I will never know for sure. that was probably my favorite thing i saw while at sea.
Uploaded 01/02/2011
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