My brother-in law is a first officer on board a ship in the mediterranean. His job is basically pretty simple, (if you can call "driving" a zillion tonne ship simple) he does his shift at the helm and then gets his head down for some shut-eye.

I asked him if he had ever seen anything strange whilst out at sea.

One night, at about silly o'clock in the morning, he was up on the "bridge" and he knew everyone else was asleep, except the guy who does the fire-watch,(he's the guy who walks around the boat for 2 hours per shift to make sure that there are no arsonists on board). He knew, through radio comms. that the fire watch guy was at the back of the ship so nothing to worry about there.

Suddenly, right in front of him, this huge black object scuttles across the deck of his ship, just to clarify, he was not in the med. at this time, he was "driving a oil tanker in some other part of the world. He tells me that this thing is BIG. I asked him how big is BIG and he tells me "BIG" .

It then stops directly in front of the bridge and, as though it was being indecisive, looks around and then, at a very high speed, it flees over-board, he then sees the fire-watch guy come into view in front of the bridge. He seen it too!!!

To this day he still has no idea what it was and, as he put it, never wants to see anything like it again.

Just to clarify, he was approx. 500 miles from land in any direction!

Stange or what?

That sounds kinda scary,i'll beat Moe to it and suggest an adult Chupacabra. .i have no idea wot it could be.

That is very freaky! I would have been so scared if I'd seen it, but atleast it went overboard! Can you imagine the terror to think that it was still on the ship and that far from land!

Perhaps it was a seal of some kind ,if it managed to get onboard of course . Those things can grow to be much larger than a person .

But then seal has a very distinctive way of moving so we'd have to look to Golam for his thoughts. I really want to know what it could have been! It must have been some aquatic creature as it jumped overboard without any hesitation so knew it would be able to survive in the water.

I'm intrigued!

Sounds quite creepy.

Ah...The one that got away

take my word for it, the way it was described ...... i do'nt want it on the end of my line!!!!!!

any further description - mammal, fish or insect?

A friend of mine in England is a ship captain, who travels all over the world, on the huge “silly” sized ships, carrying cargo everywhere, and is gone for months at a time. He says that pirates are a reality, and they carry weapons in certain sections of the sea. And all around the ship they have powerful hoses to wash down people trying to scurry up the side. Maybe someone did get aboard and quickly exited again? That’s the simplest answer…
But saying that, the captain friend of mine says he has seen some strange things at sea. What with long hours, boring-monotonous, and misty nights, the mind some times plays tricks. Asked to explain, he simply said, no one will believe me, but I’m not the only one who sees them? He wouldn’t elaborate!

A Selkie?Human then jumped into the water to return it's skin and resume seal form.That's my theory.

Oh pirates definately exist, there is a website (i forget the URL) which is about pirate hotspots and activity so commercial shipping can avoid those areas. Apparrently the Philippines is among the worst areas for that currently

Was he somewhere around New Zealand... Could have been one of these...

Sounds like a giant seal that washed up on the deck then scurried away. I been near one that was the size of a Ford 350 ton truck. They can move fast on land too.

Aha, so much happens at sea that is unexplained- read my sighting report in the Indian Ocean (at sea, underwater sighting)- I am intrigued by any mystery of the sea...
As far as pirates- they are a real threat- Nothing like going through the Straits of Mallaca, thats for sure. They, the pirates, are very high tech now- and once they board they go straight for the captain, as he has all the funds on board the vessel, usually located in a safe in his quarters.
It is a sight to see hundreds of ships going through the straits with their water cannons blasting up and over the sides, as the water actually creates about the safest defence against unautorized boarding by pirates. They use high powered Zodiacs most of the time to overtake and board.
I understand why most officers and others when they do not want to talk about expieriences while out at sea....I decided to do otherwise, though. I spent 8 years behind the wheel, including big ships, tankers, and of course, " research vessels". I saw much that I cannot explain.
I am convinced, as I saw, that there is an alien (to me) presence in our oceans. I hope others from the USNS Silas Bent and the USNS Kane will ellaborate with me someday.We shall see!

That is very interesting,Alien camp's in our oceans,did they sink the Titanic????

Back to the original story, I don't think it was a seal, because tankers are pretty high off the water. This didn't happen in stormy weather did it?

To begin with, an animal is really kind of out of the question to me( possible though). A tanker will ride high out of the water while it is empty, decks could be as high as 35 feet or so out of the water- however while under way with a half million barrels or so of whatever substance is being hauled the decks would be very low to the water, I have been on tankers where the deck was less than 10 feet out of the water while underway with a load- and the seas will continually wash over over the decks. So, a seal or whatever is possible I guess- but very improbable. A likely thought that comes to my mind is the venting of gases from the load being hauled- depending on the light and weather at the time this could be a variable to consider. During rough seas especially, as the load will vent with a tremendous force-
I ask myself why the government did certain things while on board the before mentioned ships. A sub has an operating depth of 7,000 feet or less. In the area of my sighting we hung around for a couple of days- and NAVOCEANO had us doing continuous tests. Two tests were common- CTD drops, which is a device that is lowered to the bottom and transmits, via fiber optics embedded in the cable, measured tempature, salinity and depth. The second is a core sample- a large pipe with a thousand pound weight on it is sent to the bottom and it stabs into the sea-bed, the pipe has a plastic core that is removable for analyses of the contents inside. Kinda like a time-line I suppose. Another procedure was common also- the towing around of this big "sled"-with all kinds of equipment, cameras etc- this device was built right after Alvin- the one that takes all the deep sea photos- and when I launched this device for them, you would only see it long enough to put over the side as it was stored in a special container on the aft deck, whatever it did was sure kept quiet....we towed this for a couple of days after the sighting. Tell me why we were doing all these tests after seeing that object? And here is the kicker...the water was from 11000 to 14000 feet deep. The wire and cable on the winches had never been lowered to this depth while I was on board, and it appeared that, judging by the mineralization and the color of the wire as we started getting close to the bottom, that they had never been lowered to this depth-
What better place than the ocean? Hell, we cant even go down past 7k feet or so- there has to be an explanation for what I, and others saw- and my deduction is this- what better place is there than the ocean for habitation of a race-or aliens?
For interesting reading, enter the USNS KANE and the USNS Silas Bent in your google search. There is even a resident ghost on the Kane- which I had not heard of before I recently started digging for info on google-
I saw what I saw- it was a round object- seas were glass(no waves at all) and I will never forget the senior scientists words on the squak box-" Gentleman, interesting NATURAL phenomena off the port bow"......and when this object departed on an approx. 30 degree angle back into the depths and poof- it was gone- It made me a believer- all the theorys concerning alien existence on other planets? They are right here with us- in our oceans.
The company that operates these ships is DYN SERVICES, look into them via google and you will be interested, as they are the CIA's and our governments front company-
I hope I do not suffer any reprocussions from this disclosure!!! For I have decided to make public my expierience- but I was not instructed to keep quiet on this matter. So maybe all will be good! And may we all realize one thing, at some time in the near future- THE TRUTH!!!!