The other night, I saw the most curious thing in the marina. There was a “glow” under the water. I tried to take a picture, but the iPhone 4 has pretty crappy night exposure. It’s probably better that way. Now you can use your imagination and it will be WAY better than the pic.
I was taking the dogs for their nightly walk and I saw what I first thought was a green spotlight shining on the water in the middle of the channel between B and C docks. There’s several fishing boats here and it seemed like a logical conclusion. I started looking around to see who was shining the light. No one. Nothing.
I finished walking the dogs, put them back on Emet, and went to investigate.
The light had that strange alien underwater green glow. Phosphorescent. It was about 6 feet in diameter. What made it even stranger was there was a school of fish, maybe 10 or so (does that qualify as a school), also unidentified, about 1 to 2 feet long, that were swimming clockwise around the light in a fairly tight two level concentric circle pattern. I would see one fish drop out of the pattern and then another come from the darkness and seamlessly enter the procession. I watched for several minutes. Does the marina have underwater lights for ambience? Doesn’t make sense. Only one? And right here of all the random places? Haven’t seen it any other night. Why would it start working now? Maybe it was some special underwater fishing light that someone dropped in the water to come back and retrieve later? I didn’t see a floating buoy or anything. A disposable underwater fishing light? Seems stupid to me, but we do live in a stupid disposable consumer world. I finally settled on someone simply dropped a light in the water by accident. I watched for a few minutes, mesmerized. It was peaceful and eerie at the same time.
The next morning I looked to determine if I could spot a glow in the same location. It was daylight, yes, but I figured I might be able to discern a difference in the hue of the water’s surface. I didn’t see anything. This lent credibility to my conclusion that it was a dropped light. Clearly the battery had died.
Then last night we were coming back from work. It was around midnight. As we walked down the dock, the light was there again. No circling fish this time, but there were also some guys fishing from our dock. They hadn’t caught them all because they said they hadn’t caught a thing. I didn’t ask about the light because . . . well, not sure why I didn’t ask them. I was tired and just wanted to get to bed. Or I didn’t want to look like an imbecile: “You haven’t seen these things on YouBoob and Fbook? Yeah, it’s one of those new disposable fishing lights. It only comes on at night. 100% biodegradable and 100% post consumer recycled waste. Has a thorium/polonium/uranium quantum battery. Manufacturer says that it completely dissolves in salt water in 20 days and is essentially harmless. Thing costs $10 on Amazon with free shipping. It’s made right here in the good ‘ole US of A and it’s been approved by the FDA.”
As we got to our slip at the end of the dock I saw another glow. This one was more blue than green. About the same size. Only feet off the end of our dock. No fish at this one either.
Now there are two of them.
Clearly there are small colonies of tiny aquatic aliens that live in about 9 feet of water moving into the marina. They must have gotten word that this was a quiet place. As long as they don’t discharge their waste into the water, I should be OK with them. Anyone have an underwater speaker? (Cue Close Encounters contact music . . .)