![]() " It is a genuinely terrifying sight, rare, but not so rare that I haven’t seen two in one season. "Now, put it in a gale with 25-foot waves (50 feet trough to peak)… And it becomes a towering spike of death that shoots up from the sea every 15 to 20 minutes, out of nowhere, 60 feet into the air, only to plunge down into the dark depths waiting to skewer some unsuspecting boat in a few minutes when it thrusts out of the ocean again." It rots in such a way that it becomes sharpened to a perfect point by wind and waves, and looks quite menacing." "Now, give that pole 20 years of floating around or so. Shows up on the radar, and is easy to spot." So you have this four-foot diameter telephone pole in the sea, sticking up 40 feet into the air. "Sometimes when a big log gets loose from a raft, it becomes partially waterlogged and floats small end up. But one of the most terror-inspiring things I’ve seen are what can happen with some of the loose logs from the logging trade." "In the Gulf of Alaska, I have seen some s**t. "Giant spears plunging in and out of the sea." Seeing those tentacles was just insane for their length and to think about how a shark is mostly muscle and the Octopus would just snap em was kinda scary." " The crew would joke about it thereafter, people would smoke on the deck at night and people would say don't let the Octopus in. "The Marine Biologist lowered a dive camera and this Octopus was HUGE." "The Marine Biologist smiled and said, 'Octopus is literally doing that to entertain themselves. A shark was swimming by in a cruising fashion and we see these tentacles grab it right in front of the glass and snap it like a glowstick." "This Octopus had made itself a home between the base and the deck. everyone got to see the reason the sharks were dying like viewing it on a movie screen." Then one morning while in a room that was completely submerged and had a beautiful view as we sat in a meeting. The guys on the rig had all kinds of theories. "What made it really weird was they looked like they had heart attacks or died in their sleep, no marks or bites or anything. The crew would have to punch them down so the current could catch them with a large pole." ![]() they would float up under the see-through deck that looked much like a metal colander. "Then a steady four or five a day for a week or two. Ended up doing oil rigs and one beautiful morning there were Sharks going under the main platform like always but there were two dead sharks, next morning three new dead, then four the next day." "Fresh out of college I got a job in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an architect designing whatever. It studied the ship for a moment until just sinking back down until the glow of the water masked it completely." " The whale cocked to one side and looked at the ship, and our eyes met, I want to think. Suddenly a lot of turbulence and a whale surfaces. But this patch gets darker and darker and darker until pitch black. There was still a LOT of glowing water, we weren't headed out of it. "I stared at what were multiple squids passing by for minutes, what seemed like an eternity, and then the light started going away in the spot I was staring. You could catch their outline in the light from the water." "At night during one of these events, I saw blue glowing water (what I now know was bioluminescent algae), and inside this rather massive patch of blue glowing water was squid, that appeared to be maybe 15-20 feet long. It's mesmerizing, especially if you're alone." ![]() You look at this pitch-black void, with only the wake or turbulence of the water catching light, and intrusive thoughts of jumping in just naturally occur. They say it draws you in, and it really does. "Another time, I was watching the water at night. "In the middle of the Pacific, it's so dark, and there's so little light pollution, you can see reds, browns, and faint blues of gas clouds in the starscape." "Once we had 100s, probably around 400 dolphins riding the carrier's wake. "Oftentimes in the Navy, I'd stand on the fantail and watch the ocean."
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