ETA: after a lot of requests here is the link to one of the best articles Ive ever read online. It just happens to be on deep sea Sat divers and once you start you WILL NOT stop reading. Fascinating...


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-saturation-diver.amp




I had a co-worker telling me about seeing a shadow pass Under him during open water dive off the coast of California that was soo big he thought it was a whale or a submarine. It made no sound. He remembers getting an extremely uneasy feeling a few minutes before it happened. Visibility was poor due to his depth but he could just make out a massive moving object below him.


Anyways It reminded me of a thread here a while back that had some crazy cool stories and I was hoping to see if we could get any more of those to break the cycle of doom and gloom for a bit .

Thalassophobia...

Fishing off the coast of Bahia De Los Angeles about 20 years ago in what had to be 105 degree heat on some janky ass center column boat with no way to escape the sun. I decided to slip into the water to cool off only to find the 2 guys working the fishing charter screaming at me while I was in the water in their broken english.. "RED DEVILS! RED DEVILS! COME COME COME!!"

I had no idea what that meant at that moment, but I'm pretty sure I swam so fast I produced a wake to get back to the boat!

Turns out these things will fuck you up.
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Till this day that area gives me an uneasy feeling.

Nothing to crazy. In the reef looking in different holes and cracks in the coral and see a big eye looking back at me. Turned out to be a huge eel with big teeth and decided to let me have a close look for my trouble. I got back away from it as best I could without putting my hands in front of me. They like fingers apparently.

Holy shit. I imagine the beak on that thing would be a bitch to deal with. Not to mention the rest of the damned thing

Diving off the coast of Maine. Typical lousy visibility, maybe 15 feet. My dive buddy and I down about forty feet. Suddenly we were face to face with two big torpedo rays (electric!). Fortunately they swim very slowly so we did not bump into them.

Just reading this thread freaks me out, always stay in the boat

I know NPR sucks but if you look up This American Life episode 515 and skip to act 3 there’s a good story about Bushmans Cave. Someone died exploring it and some other guys put their lives on the line to dive down and recover his body. For me the only thing scarier than caves is caves that are filled with water.

My brother was boogie boarding off the coast of Oregon and bumped into something. A few seconds later a fun popped up.

There’s a story of a man that worked for the Point Defiance Zoo and was out one morning in Ouget Sound near the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Supposedly a great surfaced and skimmed the side of his boat. No idea if true or not. I’ve never heard of a great white in puget sound.

In on one.. going to Florida next week

Pulling up 5" shark teeth off of Hilton Head in 2 foot visibility at night, Hearing the boats passing overhead is pretty creepy. Watching the stingrays and shrimp inches from your face is pretty cool. Seeing the tail of a gator is not.

I’ve fed a shark off my center console while alone 20 miles off shore, but I sure as shit didn’t get in the water

Was diving in the Solomon Islands and we were on a shelf.  Shelf was at about 80' then it was a straight drop to 1400' or so.  I went off the edge because I was fascinated looking into the abyss. At around 120' or so, where I was hovering, I could see two shadows below me. Slowly they got bigger and bigger and were circling up. It was a pair of hammerheads. Absolutely incredible to see. They were huge too, probably in the 10'-12' range. They just came up to have a look at me then disappeared back into the depths.

When I was time building I flew banners in central Florida. When you’re out over the water you can clearly see where the surf is churned up and where the clearer blue green water stops.

In this clear area which is out past where the waves start to break all you see is thousands of long slender shadows swimming up and down the coastline for ever in each direction.

Those shadows are sharks eating all the smaller fish that feed off of the stuff kicked up by the waves.

All day long you see people on rafts and swimming all over this area while thousands of sharks are literally right under their feet.

Every once in a while you’d see a monster of a shadow that would dwarf all the others.

Would not be much of a leap if there was a Great White in the sound.
I know they have caught Humboldt squid in the mouth of the Columbia and up river as far as Astoria, they rode the warmer current up from Cali.
I am waiting for a bull shark or five to follow the sea lions and seals into the rivers.  A dozen years ago or so there was something that freaked the Sturgeon out enough for them to ball up,  it was the same year a customer of mine a commercial fisherman caught the said 55lb Humboldt between Astoria and Warrenton.

A few of the old river guys I know have claimed they have seen a fin in the Willamette river south of Portland.  While at the time I would have called them full of shit,  same with the claims of seeing seals and sealions near the falls.  That would be until a couple of really honest guys I knew from down there pulled in either just a salmon head on the line or half a fish with claw marks raked down the remaining fish.

That's a Humboldt Squid.  They're scary SOBs.  Their tentacles are full of suckers with sharp teeth, they travel in large groups, and even eat each other on occasion.  They can change color and even communicate with each other, and hunt cooperatively.

Daytona?

I wonder how well they can see in dark water. Would be scary as hell to know how many eyes are looking at you from the deep while you're doing your thing up top

I have seen large groups of them before. I would guess 75 or so. I looked like this as they went by..

Diving for 30+ years, saw lots of crazy stuff.  Bottom line is once you fo into the ocean, you enter a different level of the food chain and submit yourself to Mother Nature.  And she’s a bitch.

Free diving spear fishing off the Southern California coast had a harbor seal that would randomly bite my fins and yank real hard.

Almost always made me shit my wetsuit.

It just wanted to play fetch.

Wasn't there a story of a Navy ship that collided with something at sea and when they got back to drydock they found huge gouges in the sonar dome and gigantic suction cup marks?

Yep! Daytona, New Smyrna, Ormond and occasionally we would tow over St Augustine.

I did a solo dive in a small mountain lake over in Jackson county NC. Quite cold even in the middle of summer, about 20 feet down there was a thermocline and below it was pitch black. Granted I didn't have a high dollar light but my main light wouldn't show beyond maybe two feet. I called it early because it was just the creepiest feeling and not just the dark and the cold.Later I was talking to an instructor I did some training with and he kind of went quiet when I told him where I'd done my first solo dive. He'd worked a body recovery there with the local rescue squad a month or so earlier. Guy was diving it and got tangled in debris on the bottom and couldn't free himself.

I saw a documentary on them once that said they were much smarter then Dogs, Dolphins, or maybe even Chimps. They showed them solving complex problems to get food and then TEACHING other squid how to do it.

Fuck that. I'm not getting in the water.

East pass, Destin.  I was diving in zero visibility testing out my nav skills.
I was standing on the bottom when I felt pressure on my back.  
I turned my head and just saw the side of something passing by me.
Also, over 100” down on a night dive off Destin my light imploded.  
Back in the 80’s.  
My gauges didn’t have a light.  
I watched my buddy’s light stick ( on his tank) disappear around some debris....
Very lucky I didn’t die.  Came up at the end of the rope also. Could’ve been a long night!

Not mine but I came across this one and liked it


"I'm a commercial diver, and was once on a job cleaning a potable water reservoir. I'd been in other reservoirs before, but this was by far the biggest, at 4080 metres. To get in you had to open a hatch in the ground (the whole reservoir was underground) and climb down a ladder. The hatch was in a corner, so when you were in the far corner of the reservoir, it was completely pitch black, and you just had to hope your light didn't go out. I was about half way through a three hour dive when the batteries in my torch started going flat. I watched the beam get narrower and dimmer until it cut out completely. It's not a huge problem if you lose light, as you can just follow your umbilical back to the hatch. Just as I started walking back, some obnoxiously loud banging started somewhere in the reservoir. I was the only diver in there, so it both confused and scared the shit out of me. Needless to say I ran back to the hatch as fast as I could. I ended up getting my torch changed out and doing another hour in the water, but didn't hear the noise again. I still have no idea what it was, but the combination of my torch going out and loud banging coming from somewhere gave me a hell of a fright."

Nothing too incredibly scary, or "that was close" but I've been a support diver for body recovery from the caves here in N Florida a couple of times....

Ooo would love more info on that one.

I remember hearing about 5 submarines from four different countries all disappearing the same day or two and no one knows what happened or it was covered up.

Diving The Brother's off South Manitou island in Lake Michigan shortly after the storm uncovered it.  Peeked into a porthole and there was a big ol' Burbot staring back at me.  Scared the piss out of me.  That's as exciting as I got.

Those pics in the OP are making my heart beat faster.  Deep water is a fear of mine.  

1) Creepiest for me was this. I was getting my Advanced Open Water certification out in WA so the water visibility is already shit most of the time. It's our night dive. Water is pitch black so you can only see what your light is pointing at and we are at about 45'. Part of my class starts to break off. Knowing where we are, the instructor signals me to stay put while he wrangles the others. I kept bumping something behind me, which I figured was just another classmate. I turn with my light and now I'm face to face with a 5' Frosty the Snowman statue. I pissed my wetsuit. Terrified me.


2) Diving in the Puget Sound around the Tacoma area. Visibility is shot. All of a sudden this dark figure starts circling my brother and I and whips in between us. Moving too fast to see what it was. Brother gets a shot off with flash on his camera and by luck captured this...turns out it was a harbor seal. Still wild.

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Coming across a half eaten dolphin in a kelp forest in Monterey, CA was pretty odd too. Decent sized dolphin eaten by some type of shark.

Hammerhead sharks look really scary up close, same goes for Makos. Had a huge ass Turtle scare the shit out of me in Hawaii once, I was swimming on a huge coral head, he was on the opposite side, we both turned the corner to be face to face with each other. Both he and I kicked in the boosters in the opposite direction.

Outside of that, was on a dive where another diver had a heart attack and died.

Oh and wall dives can be kind of freaky as you stare into the deep....

Another interesting one I found for those who are following:


Used to do saturation diving. I did work on oil rigs. It's pretty spooky down there. No particularly "spooky scary seamonster" stories, but it's not a nice place.

For one, it's dark as a MOTHERFUCKER. Pitch black and your lamp barely goes more than a few yards effectively. The water is filled with particles so it's kind of like shining a light into smoke. It's seriously like being in a void and the only things in this void are you and the rig. I never disconnected from it longer than I had to. It just feels like you can fall forever.


As for spooky scary seamonsters, I never really saw any. Don't get me wrong, you see shit a lot. The mixture you're breathing combined with the pressure can and will fuck with your senses. More than a few times I saw something big and fast moving just beyond my light. Sound doesn't travel well in water but you can hear the rig popping and other shit, always really deep tones.


You see a bunch of really weird fucking fish though. No joke, divers usually see a lot of fish that aren't identified. The aquanauts have to do that but they can never get the funding to come down and see what we see, so we just live with the aliens. We named a few but you don't really see them often and rarely more than two or three times. Some fish are drawn to the lamp, but others stay the fuck away from it.


I think the most interesting is what the mixture and depth does to your brain. When you've been out in the water for a while and literally only you and the piece of metal you're clinging to are the only things that seem to exist, your brain tries to fill the void. At least, I hope it was my brain doing that.


The rig popping is really ominous because it's like a bass drum that's all around you and the only sound in almost absolute silence. You can see things moving in the dark and when you look at them, your lamp only goes ten yards or so and all it's hitting are the particles in the water. This happens a few times and you're certain you're not alone down there. You feel like you're being hunted. A lot of guys die because they try and rush and that's something you can't do underwater, no matter how much you want to. You kind of got to get it in your head that "well shit I hope it doesn't eat me" and keep working. It can be hard not to panic. They teach you tactical breathing both to conserve and to keep you from losing it.


You start focusing really god damn hard on that tactical breathing when you swear you saw something on the edge of your vision, felt the water move against your back, and heard the shift.


Another story came to mind: I was out doing my job one time in the absolute darkness of the void. I had been out a good thirty or forty-five minutes when I saw something swish over the top of my vision really fast. I looked around, couldn't see anything. Spooked me good and so I just focused on my tactical breathing and not losing my fingers. A minute passed and I saw something go a little behind the pylon and down. I was 100% sure it was a kraken or some shit. Another minute passes and then this two or so foot fish comes swimming up to me. Weird looking motherfucker. Pale and long and skinny with BIG eyes and a bigger mouth. It just kind of darted around me for a bit, just hanging out with me while I worked. When I was done, he took off. Cool fish bro.


I told the story to a buddy of mine and he suggested that the fish hung around me because of my light. A lot of things don't approach the light down there. He was probably using me for shelter from something bigger and meaner. How terrifying.


On the topic of death: The pay was good but the only place it could really get you was dead eventually. I know of many people who died and I personally knew two. One panicked while he was working, as I understand, and fucked himself up. Getting hurt down there is a death sentence. You can't get back up in time to get patched up. My other buddy died because they fucked up his mixture. You can't put too much oxygen in the tank because it doesn't react well at depth. He went down and had a seizure due to it. Big investigation after that one.


I think the closest I ever came to dying was when I went on an excursion, which is where you go to a different depth than the bell is at, and was about to come back up when I got tangled in my gear really bad. I lost track of it as I went back and forth around the pylons. Normally it's pretty easy to get out of, but it got caught under my helmet which is bad for a variety of reasons. Also, when you're tangled and it's not taut, you can fall or rise without noticing. So basically I had to carefully unweave myself without snapping any harness or locks while I fell into this bottomless abyss. It was actually pretty terrifying. Tactical breathing at its finest. I obviously made it out okay.

My dad and I got into amateur underwater archaeology about 25 years ago. We started exploring the creeks and rivers around eastern North Carolina. Due to silt and the tannin of cypress trees, the water was pitch black and we had zero, meaning you can’t even read your gauges if you hold them against your mask, visibility. Not even the most powerful flashlight would penetrate the inky black water. We learned to do everything by feel and it is surprising how quickly your brain can form detailed images based on what you touch.

We were volunteering for the department of cultural resources, doing some work on a confederate gunboat that we found near the Virginia border in the Dismal Swamp. We were doing all the basic measurements of what was there and composing a composite sketch of all of the boards and beams and other features of the boat, all in total darkness.

To help us know where we were on the boat, we pulled a rope down the keel from one end to the other. Every 5 feet on the rope we had a stainless steel “dog tag“ that we used a center punch to pop dimples on. Basically, at the 5 foot mark there was one dimple, at the 10 foot mark there was two dimples at the 15 foot mark there was three dimples and so on. We could always reference the tags by feel and know where we were on the wreck.

Every week we went there to dive on the boat I had to go make sure the line was in the center of the keel and make sure there were no sticks accumulated inside the wreck. I would swim down the length of the boat collecting the sticks and then I would throw them up on the bank. After diving for several years on this wreck there was a pile of these sticks on the bank that looked like a beaver lodge. My dad was in his 70s at the time and was a bit slow to get his gear on. It was always my job to clear the sticks.

So that particular morning I quickly suited up and started swimming down the keel. About halfway down, with one arm holding the collected sticks, I felt my dad’s scuba fin pass in front of my face and knock my mask sideways. I cleared my mask underwater, frustrated that he had gotten that close to me knowing what I was doing. No sooner and then I got my mask cleared and started my chore again, I feel his fin swirl by and dislodge my regulator. Reaching back to my first stage on top of my tank, I grabbed the regulator hose and traced it back to my second stage. A quick purge to blow out the mud, and I popped it back in my mouth.

Frustrated, I decided to go to the other end of the boat and work my way back from there to give my dad some space. I inflated my vest and since the water was only about 12 feet deep I soon popped my face through the surface into the blinding morning sunlight. Blinking madly as my eyes adjusted from the blackness, I saw my dad was still getting suited up in the boat. I was confused so I asked him if he had been in the water. He looked at me like I was crazy and said shook his head. “Must’ve been a big catfish under there.” was the only thought that came to my mind. I went back down and finish clearing the keel line without incident.

About a week later some kayakers paddled up to that desolate part of the river. On top of that pile of sticks they took a photograph of an 8 foot alligator. They submitted it to the local newspaper and my aunt sent us a copy. As soon as I saw the picture of the alligator, I realized what was pushing me around under water. If I would’ve reached out and touched alligator, Jesus wouldn’t have been the only guy who walked on water.

having a gigantic grouper sneak up on me on a deep dive off the coast of NJ gave me a spook one time.  otherwise, that feeling when you look down into the depths at a shelf - cool as shit but always eerie.

Fuck deep black open water. I’m not afraid of much, but fuck all that. If that’s called thalassophobia, I guess I’m thalassophobic.

Probably just an old sea tale but I guess they also found hooked "beaks" imbedded in the steel. Supposedly these beaks are what is inside the suction cup of a squid or octopus. Normally they are tiny, these were several inches long.  Like I said, probably just a story made up to scare new Sailors........but still.


Someone here mentioned the Tacoma narrows bridge. When I was stationed at Ft. Lewis I met a couple of old fishermen who told me a story of a giant Octopus that lives in the debris field left behind by the collapse of " Galloping Gerty". Heard the same story from an experienced diver sometime later who claimed to have seen it. Both stories said the thing was something like 50 feet across from one tentacle tip to another.

Diving into an upside down yachts cabin to extract a body.  Seat cushions and other crap in the way then you bump into mr dead guy.  Always a special treat.

getting the heebiejeebies in this thread

Several years ago I was night fishing off a friends boat out of Sesuit Harbor in Dennis, MA.

6 of us on the boat going for Stripers. Me and a friend were sitting on the back platform of the boat with our legs hanging in the water.

One after another we all started to hook up, lines went tight and rods bending. Lines kept breaking and only one guy was able to reel it in. It was a 5’ sand shark.

We grabbed one of those million watt spotlights and looked down into the water to see sharks everywhere.
Sand sharks a basically harmless but it is a very scary feeling to be surrounded by them and having your legs hanging in the water.

I love being on boats, but I don’t go in the water past my waist.

Bug hunting at Channel Islands (Pacific Ocean) at 3AM. Pitch black ocean with barking seals or sea lions on shore. When I pointed out the barking seals, the dive instructor asked me is I was a pussy, so I responded "NOPE! let's dive!".

Deepest I got was 40 feet because I lost my bearings (only my 2nd night dive) and my dive buddy was gone. Alone in the dark with a flashlight that maybe reached 10ft, cold water, knowing full well Great Whites swim and feed there. That was in my 20's...I wouldn't do it again now lol

I wouldn’t do that job for any sum of money.  Fuck all that.

That would be a rough job man

Dive boat left without us in Honduras.
Night dives are always creepy.

Picking up dead people off the bottom in pitch black conditions.  Nothing but black to see.  You have to feel for them.

My dive buddy and I found an obscure sink/spring outside of Gainesville.  We had to haul our gear about 100 feet down a slope, and then descend about 80 feet to the bottom, where we found a Cadillac, a van, and a motorcycle. We thought about trying to get into the trunk of the Caddy to look for a body but decided against it.

My buddy swam away from me at one point, and all of a sudden I saw him kicking really hard and making very little progress away from what looked like a cave entrance.  I motioned for him to swim sideways (like you would to escape a riptide) and he was able to get away from the suction current.

Turns out the hole led to a big tube that traveled about 1/4 mile under the main road separating where we were from a big lake.

Not super scary, but I was part of a class working thru a bunch of quals towards master diver. We would get together and practice and do different stuff, with basic oversight from a couple of instructors.
Myself and another guy were doing search and recovery this day, on the west side of Oahu by the power plant. Several hundred yards out, the outflow pipe for the cooling water chugs shitloads of hot water out of a 6 foot or so pipe. Water depth there is maybe around 50', and theres usually interesting sealife interacting there.
We were on the bottom underneath the outflow, practicing searching in a grid pattern, and decided to use a lifting bag to move some big rocks. I went first, hooked up one and burped the tiniest bit of air into it from my regulator, moved it and set it down. Then it was his turn.
He released what looked.like a half a tank of air into the bag, and took off with it like a rocket. Never let go, just rode that thing straight up, and then very quickly disappeared sideways into the blast of warm water flowing out into the Pacific.
I swam as far as I thought I should out to.look.for him, then surfaced to look, no sign. I headed back to our main rendezvous by the flag, and told one of the instructors, who went off to look.
In the meantime within about 5 minutes, visibility went from forever to a few feet. The instructor came back with a look of terror, said get to shore now, as he was deathly afraid of turbid water and the numerous sharks we always saw.
Anyway, the other diver had escaped the current but said he was tumbled a bunch and actually swam to the bottom thinking he was heading to the surface. He probably hadnt gone very far sideways, but he was shaken up, gear all.out.of place.from flopping around, and then had to swim back to shore alone, while everybody on the other side.of the area was hauling ass from shark fear.
I never saw him on any other dives, I think he gave.it up.

not deep water but I lived in Daytona and took up surfing. After a few adventures I switched to surf kayaking. Not much better but at least you feel like you have a weapon of a paddle. New Smyrna is where we surfed, and it's the shark bite capital of the US. most of the time it's little bites from little sharks and the people get patched up in the sand.

Anyway we're have fins pop up around us and that always meant time to go home. One day my buddy and I decide to go throw a football on a sandbar that's like 30 yards from shore. There's a surprisingly deep channel between the shore and the bar so we swim through to get there. On the way back as soon as I dive into the channel I see a set of fins come into it pretty quickly. Dorsal and Tail pop through the surface. And they are about 5 feet apart. Which means the shark is about 10 feet long. I was swimming so hard I didn't stop till I was doing the breaststroke in dry sand

Another time we were dicking around in the surf and I got stung by a jellyfish in the leg and it hurt worse than anything. Of course everyone is offering to pee on me and calling me a bitch. I stay out of the water and my buddy dives in and is immediately stung in the eye. Swollen instantly. Turns out there was a man-o-war breeding bloom or some shit so all these little bastards were in the surf.

Same buddy is out boogie boarding some time later and has an 8' hammerhead come straight at him, mouth open in the chop. He shit himself but I couldn't give him grief.

A bunch of times we'd go snorkel springs and rivers in central florida. More often than not we'd see a gator or many. It's not usually a big deal, but when they are swimming towards you and then go under it means it's time for you to leave. Fun fact, every inch a gators eyes are apart is roughly a foot in gator length. Some big fuckers down there, that's for sure. I was chased off by a 12 footer once. Wasn't worried because I was snorkeling with my brother and I'm much faster than him

Lobstering in broad daylight in the keys. Clear water, too - you'd be surprised how fast a shark can pull up on you even in those perfect conditions.

Fucking 8' nurse shark swam by and scared the shit out of me once in like 4' of water in a flat, in a hole.