As much as we might think we learned on Career Day in elementary school, there's really no way of knowing all there is to know about a profession until we've worked in it ourselves.
For some professions, like sailing and zookeeping, what happens could feel completely out of this world.
Redditor Myriagon10000 asked:
"Sailors/people working at sea, what's the most creepy or most amazing sight you witnessed?"
Northern Lights
"The northern lights in the middle of nowhere Alaska. We were anchored in a remote cove, so the CO agreed to turn off all the exterior lights. Just a crazy, crazy thing to see."
- Curbside_Hero
"Seeing them is absolutely spectacular."
"Hearing them though was unsettling for me. People have called them 'spirits' for a reason."
- MostSeaworthiness
The Lure of the Deep Blue
"Oftentimes in the Navy, I'd stand on the fantail and watch the ocean."
"Once we had 100s, probably around 400 dolphins riding the carrier's wake. They followed us for three days."
"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."
"Another time, I was watching the water at night. They say it draws you in, and it really does. 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. It's mesmerizing, especially if you're alone."
"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. You could catch their outline in the light from the water."
"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. There was still a LOT of glowing water, we weren't headed out of it. But this patch gets darker and darker and darker until pitch black. A solid 15 seconds of intense curiosity. Suddenly a lot of turbulence and a whale surfaces. It had snatched up all the squid."
"The whale cocked to one side and looked at the ship, and our eyes met, I want to think. It studied the ship for a moment until just sinking back down until the glow of the water masked it completely."
- Stehlik-Alit
Flying Fish
"For me, it was the flying fish. I was just sitting there one day near Barbados, watching the water, and all of a sudden, I looked over and there were these 'birds' jumping out of the ocean. Took me a few minutes to actually understand that they were fish jumping out and not birds jumping in. Those things had some range on their glides."
"Later the next day when we went to Barbados, I found out the flying fish was on their currency and a popular dish. Tasted kinda fishy."
- Ivort-DC
Fairy Dust
"I'm not a seafarer, but I was camping on an island in British Columbia beside a cliff that was about a fifteen-foot drop into the ocean. Late at night, I decided to jump in. The water exploded into light!"
"The bioluminescence was triggered by motion, so the movement of my arms and legs as I swam made green trails in the blackness. I called to the other people and we had the trippiest swim ever. It was like being covered in fairy dust."
- TrollsDocumentary
Whale Contact
"I had a humpback look at me from about 15 feet off the side of a small boat off the coast of Massachusetts one time. It was just him and I, and he was absolutely looking at me."
- VXMerlinXV
Surprise Visitor
"Fresh out of college I got a job in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an architect designing whatever. 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."
"Then a steady four or five a day for a week or two... they would float up under the see-through deck that looked much like a metal colander. The crew would have to punch them down so the current could catch them with a large pole."
"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 guys on the rig had all kinds of theories. Then one morning while in a room that was completely submerged and had a beautiful view as we sat in a meeting... everyone got to see the reason the sharks were dying like viewing it on a movie screen."
"This Octopus had made itself a home between the base and the deck. 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."
"The Marine Biologist smiled and said, 'Octopus is literally doing that to entertain themselves... like because he can.'"
"The Marine Biologist lowered a dive camera and this Octopus was HUGE."
"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. 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."
- Cannotakema
Sea Spears
"Giant spears plunging in and out of the sea."
"In the Gulf of Alaska, I have seen some s**t. 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."
"Sometimes when a big log gets loose from a raft, it becomes partially waterlogged and floats small end up. So you have this four-foot diameter telephone pole in the sea, sticking up 40 feet into the air. No biggie. Shows up on the radar, and is easy to spot."
"Now, give that pole 20 years of floating around or so. It rots in such a way that it becomes sharpened to a perfect point by wind and waves, and looks quite menacing."
"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 is a genuinely terrifying sight, rare, but not so rare that I haven’t seen two in one season. It’s like the spiked d**k of Neptune looking for an opportunity to f**k your s**t up in a particularly terrifying way."
- bidet_enthusiast
Rock the Boat
"I’ve spent a good amount of time at sea on a research vessel, and it’s definitely not for everyone, it takes a special breed of person."
"The ocean is beautiful and enchanting, but also isolating and desolate. And your ship can almost feel like a mobile prison, since you’re basically stuck there with what little space you have, and most ships aren’t built for comfort and leisure like a cruise liner."
"But when the wind kicks up and the waves get tall, motion sickness (or at least some disorientation) is a constant companion that you just have to ride out. No escape except to let the weather pass."
"I’ve been through some larger storms that are very unnerving when your ship is being pounded by swell and tossed like a roller coaster… you just gotta trust that it won’t capsize."
- TrumpetofDeath
The Color of Moonrise
"I was on watch and a lookout reported a ship on fire on the horizon. Looked through my binos and saw what they were looking at. Looked like a plume of flame really far away, just over the line of the horizon."
"I went and consulted the Astro books and discovered that it was actually moonrise. The tip of the crescent was coming up over the astronomical horizon, and was bright red-orange. Still very cool."
"I’ve also seen the Flying Dutchman illusion, dolphins swimming through bioluminescent waters that looked like glowing torpedoes, meteor hits near the ship, lightning hitting the mast, waterspouts in the Caribbean, and the green flash at sunset. Many more things as well, being at sea is just plain trippy!"
- RiotousRagnarok
A Little Crowded
"You know the feeling of being in a full stadium? 10,000's of people all within sight of each other... all together?"
"Multiply that by 100 and maybe that would be like the sea of sea mammals I was in the middle of, presumably on a bunch of food below... squid or something. There were half a dozen species of dolphin and half a dozen species of whales all together going completely crazy busting the surface white, hundreds of thousands, I'm guessing."
"Going into the fo'c'sle of the small 42 ft lobster boat was like entering a different reality. Through the hull, you could 'hear.' They were all 'talking' to one another and I could say you could 'hear' them but it was something else entirely..."
"The bones in my skull and the rest of my body were vibrating at every frequency heard and sub and supersonic alike in alien rhythms and repeating patterns... a once-in-a-lifetime sensation...lasted about half an hour. Highly recommended."
- fishified1
The Rare Moondog
"I once saw a rainbow by moonlight. Sadly this was before digital cameras, so I had no chance of getting a picture."
- Mogster2K
The Good and the Bad
"I used to work on an Atlantic Salmon farm a few miles out to sea. Best job I ever had."
"Creepy:"
"We were round at the second site (other side of the island to the main site, and this one was being left fallow for a couple of years so just required some maintenance every now and then / was used for storage). My brother and I were there late afternoon to check some ropes or moorings or something, I can’t remember, when all of a sudden there was this really strong electrical / copper smell and the place went silent."
"It was flat calm, relatively clear skies so it wasn’t a thunderstorm coming in. For some reason, this smell really freaked us both out, and we both felt like we were being watched by something there was a kind of strange feeling/atmosphere to the place where it just seemed off."
"After a couple of minutes it went away and the 'atmosphere' returned to normal. We were pretty glad to get back to the main site but never experienced anything like that again. Really weird."
"Awesome:"
"This one is hard to describe, but sometimes we would have to pull super long 18-20 hour shifts at harvest time. This involved starting sometimes at 2 AM and working until late in the evening, and there wasn’t actually loads of work the whole time, to do we just needed to be present for a lot of it and lift a cage net once an hour or so. So we mostly just stood around drinking coffee and talking boll**ks."
"Anyway, I digress. We were starting out one of these mornings in the speedboat heading out to the site, on a really crisp winter night. Not a breath of wind, super cloudless sky, and a hint of aurora above us. Speeding along into the night with my buddies in this beautiful scenery, nice fancy survival suits on to keep warm, I remember looking up and seeing a huge sky full of stars, and a shooting star burning across the sky out towards the horizon."
"As I say I can’t really bring it to words, but I’ve never really felt more alive or happy in my work than that night."
- 89ElRay
The Milky Way
"I was a Quartermaster and when I was in the Pacific, I saw a completely clear night one time. I saw the Milky Way split the sky and I could see its reflection in the water. The sight was so beautiful it brought me to tears."
- mourningreaper00
Mountain Views
"The most amazing thing I've seen is watching the mountains in the sunrise while pulling into port in Norway. That was the moment I realized I was actually living. I don't think I'll see anything as majestic until I go back to Norway. Just beautiful!"
- PierceDiLuna
Once-in-a-Lifetime
"Being out at sea was definitely one of the best experiences of being in the Navy. I got to see the northern lights, a meteor shower, and a blood moon. My favorite pass time was identifying the constellations. Eventually, when I got to learn a significant amount, I was able to tell what direction we were going. I’m seriously grateful I got to experience that."
- ChiliConCarne44
These accounts sound nothing short of amazing. While it may not be enough to convince us all to be sailors, we surely could all do with a few more stories about their journeys.