I’ve been exploring the seas my whole life. I’ve seen some things.
Most sailors and fishermen are pretty quiet about this stuff. They usually just drown all their experiences in alcohol. I’m not shy about my own struggles with rum myself, it makes for an easy way to forget certain things. Plus its sweetness kind of offsets the saltiness of the sea which is pretty nice.
I found a Search and Rescue Officer’s post on Reddit talking about some really creepy stuff. I suppose it’s my turn to do the same but with the watery part of the world. I hope it’s okay if I use the same format he did.
I’ll talk about Point Nemo first. For those of you that don’t know, Point Nemo is an area in the South Pacific. It’s the most desolate place on Earth. At Point Nemo you are the farthest away from land you could possibly be, about 1600 miles in every direction. There is nothing there. Like literally nothing but water. No wildlife, no signs of life whatsoever. Radar just goes completely silent for days. There’s not a lot that can prepare you for being in open water. I don’t mean the roughness of the sea, I mean the sheer isolation of it. Turning around in circles and seeing nothing but horizon, knowing that what basically amounts to a few planks of wood or steel is the only thing to stand on for miles is an extremely off-putting feeling. I’ve seen some inexperienced people lose it completely after just a couple of days. It’s weird, but so much open space and such a comparatively tiny boat can get extremely claustrophobic. Most of us go through point Nemo so drunk we can barely stand just so we don’t have to think about how alone we really are. What’s really crazy about the place, though, is how all kinds of fish seem to actively avoid it. I’ve chased schools of tuna hundreds of miles out more times than I can count, but they always seem to make a 90 degree turn as soon as they start getting close to Nemo. Sharks, whales, even dolphins all do the same if we ever see them out there (which is rare). I don’t know why, none of us do. None of us have ever really talked about it. None of us know what’s down there, have ever detected anything on any of our instruments or even heard of anything bad going on. But that feeling of pure loneliness, claustrophobia, all of that, it always gets in our heads.
The sea is alive. She listens. Ever heard of sailors talk about her as if she’s got a personality? There’s a reason a lot of us refer to it as a “she” and it’s not just old superstition. I think the best example I can give are rogue waves. They’re this weird phenomenon that happens every so often, almost always at night. A completely random wave, massive, that just shows up out of the blue and hits your ship like an angry bull. It’s a huge mass of water that rushes on to the deck and can easily push you over the rails overboard. Last time this happened was with this one guy that joined our ship last minute. The guy was a whistler. I don’t know how much you know about old sailing superstitions but doing that is considered really bad luck in our world. We warned the guy not to do it, told him the sea will hear him but he didn’t listen. One night when the sea was perfectly calm, a single wave came out of nowhere and hit us. Three of us were on the deck that night, including the whistler who got swept out to sea. We never saw him again, didn’t even hear him scream for help, and the sea went back to being completely calm as if nothing had happened.
This one isn’t really supernatural, but I’ve seen it happen to another boat and it was terrifying. The ocean floor has a lot of volcanoes. Sometimes they can erupt and when that happens they loosen a ton of bubbles that can break the water’s surface tension and cause anything to sink. Watching a boat full of people slowly sinking for no apparent reason, knowing the people on board would suffer the exact same fate and being unable to do anything about it because you’d drown yourself if you go too close is probably the most helpless I’ve ever felt in my life. I still have nightmares. What’s worse is there’s nothing you can do to detect it until it’s too late.
I don’t know if many of you have ever been out at sea when there’s fog. Sometimes it drops down on you out of nowhere, I guess pressure differentials will just make some clouds drop like rocks. Other times you’ll see it just floating in front of your boat like a dark grey theater curtain. That’s the kind you usually want to avoid completely. I’ve had captains totally change course on us in order to avoid a fog like that, even though the fish we were following were headed that way. Sometimes, though, you just can’t do anything to avoid it. Fog at sea is usually extremely heavy. I’ve been on some pretty small boats, 70 miles out on tiny 30 foot fishing boats where you couldn’t see the bow because of the fog. It’s on those really deep fog days when you’ll start hearing chatter on the radio. It always starts with a bunch of static that will come and go in short bursts, then like a really high pitched sort of wail before the voice comes on. It’s always the same, a super raspy and deep voice. Definitely a man’s, and it always says the same thing. Repeats it a bunch of times. I won’t say what it is, I’m honestly too scared to write it down, but you’ll really want to answer it to try and help. Most of us know never to do that. Ever.
We don’t really have a name for this one. Most of us just call it “That Place” and most of us know exactly what we’re referring to if we mention it, which is extremely rare. I’m pretty sure it’s where the idea that the number 13 is unlucky comes from, and I’ve only ever seen it a couple of times when we’ve been far out at sea. The first time it showed up we were almost out of supplies. We’d been chasing another school of tuna for miles and had decided to take the risk, a few days rationing food and water a little more than usual in order to catch a few extra fish and make some more money. Desperate times, I suppose. We were a few hundred miles out by this point, middle of nowhere, with about 3 days’ worth of water left and about five days left before we’d make it to port. I was the first to spot it. An island that just popped up out of nowhere on the starboard side and seemed to get closer even though we were perpendicular to it. When it got close enough I noticed it was pretty small, just a couple of palm trees around a sort of turquoise lagoon. There are three things I remember perfectly about that day. The first is that the second I pointed The Place out to my captain, he just quietly and slowly shook his head “no” and didn’t mention it again. Neither did any of my boatmates. They barely even looked at it, basically tried to avoid doing so. The second, is that between quick sneak peeks at The Place I managed to count the number of palm trees. Exactly 13. The third, and weirdest of all, is that palm trees are tropical and we were way up near the arctic circle.
Last one. Anyone here ever heard of the doldrums? It’s a horrible place to find yourself in. It happens way out when you can’t see land anymore. The sea will go completely still. I’m talking about so still the whole thing basically looks like a mirror. There’s no wind, there are no waves, no sound, nothing at all. It’s one of those things that happens in hotter climates usually, which means it gets unbearably hot. Remember that feeling I mentioned when I was talking about Point Nemo? The overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia and existential loneliness? Multiply that by a thousand. The thing about the doldrums is they can sneak up on you. Sailors back in the day were terrified of them because no wind in your sails meant you could be stuck in the exact same spot for weeks, even months. Once steam engines were invented most of them thought worrying about doldrums would be a thing of the past. They were wrong. You see, most scientists will tell you that doldrums happen when wind currents just go straight up. It happens in the tropics because of the differences in temperature between the water, it’s surface, and the atmosphere above. What no one has been able to explain, though, is why the engines sometimes stop too. I don’t know why it happens either, all I, and most other sailors who have ever been stuck in them know, is that something is holding you there. We don’t know what they look like. Only those that don’t survive them know that, and they never live long enough to describe what they see. Usually they just throw themselves overboard screaming, swim away from the boat as fast as they possibly can and don’t stop until they drown from exhaustion and panic. But you do hear them. They’re whispers. Directly in your ear, like if someone was behind you, and they always start about thirty minutes after you get stuck in the doldrums and don’t stop until they’ve taken someone to the depths or get bored and let you go. I’ve never been able to understand what they say. Have never really wanted to try to do anything to find out, just the thought of it terrifies me, and honestly, the three times I’ve been stuck there I’ve spent my time in hell as drunk as I could possibly fucking get.
As therapeutic as this whole thing has been, I think I need some rest. There’s plenty more to tell, though, and I’m happy to give more details if anyone is interested.