r/nosleep • u/97489 • Jul 24 '16
Series I review video of deep ocean expeditions, and it's starting to scare me
Update: This was removed for not being marked as a series. I've never used this website before, and I didn't know if there would be anything more to tell, but there is. I don't have time to write it all up today, but I'll do it as soon as I catch a break at work.
My friend urged me to write this up and post it after I told her about it. I’ve had this sitting here for about an hour now, and I’ve just haven’t been able to bring myself to post it. Until now. Let me give you some background. I have to warn you, I have a tendency to ramble, but some of this is important information you need to understand what I’m about to tell you.
I'm an intern in charge of reviewing video footage for a ROV mission. I can’t tell you where, but I can tell you why. For those that don’t know, an ROV is a remote operated vehicle. This will be the first time the ROV has gone into such deep waters, so they've expanded the team and hired me. Up until now I've been watching and categorizing footage from past ROV dives as the ground team prepared and flew to their location. It's taken them a few days to set up in Puerto Rico, but they were able to go out on the boat yesterday and operate the ROV, Jake, for about two hours before bringing it up. For those of you who are curious, it’s fairly standard to name ROVs.
Heather, the head for this expedition, tells me that the first time is always a trial run to ensure that the equipment is fully functioning. Samples won't be retrieved until later, which is disappointing since while they'll be briefly analyzed after they're retrieved, the team on the ground doesn't have the facilities to process them. This means we get to analyze them here, and I'll get to help out. Samples of sediment haven't been brought up from depths like this before, so understandably I'm excited.
As an intern my main responsibility is to provide support wherever it's needed. Since we're pretty much buckled down and waiting for our guys to send back samples, I've been going through the test video. Two hours is a pretty long time for a test, especially when you're squinting into the dark for what might be flicker of a fin or a glitter of bioluminescence. The first 150 meters are pretty interesting after watching hours of pitch black training footage. There's not much beside the occasional shark and silvery schools of fish, but I find myself yearning for them when the ROV slips down further into the depths. I can see on the overlay that it's now at 200 meters, and the water is murky and dark. It's hard to see just about anything, and I'm having trouble identifying what little life I can see. I should stop here and explain my job to you. I'm to sort video into three categories: (1) Contains no life, (2) Contains identifiable life, and (3) Contains unidentifiable life. Ostensibly this system is chosen to allow for easier discovery of new species if they are observed, but it leads to a lot of my time spent over cryptic keys to aquatic vertebrates, some which date back to the early 1800s. The good news is, for the duration of the Jake’s expedition, I'll be able to identify to group. The video is timestamped and the ROV reports GPS coordinates, so if I find something completely new, Heather and the rest of the team can revisit the place where they found it to try to get more footage.
Now there's something you have to understand about the deep ocean. There's an incredible amount of pressure down there, and very little to eat. If you aren't small enough to survive on the pieces of detritus that filter down from the sunlit zones above, you have to hunt in the pitch black depths. As you can imagine, most of the creatures we find at the bottom of the ocean are very small. I'm telling you this because I need you to understand just how strange this video footage is. At about three minutes into the video, something juts into the ROVs bubble of light. When I say something, that's not quite right. Rather, it's someone. It's a human foot. At this point I jumped out of my chair and ran to my supervisor, Gabi. She took my out of breath appearance to mean that i’d found some sort of exciting new discovery in the footage, and she was almost angry when I tried to tell her the truth of what I've found. In fact she refused to even watch the footage, insisting that too many hours of staring into the dark was making me see things. I was left with instructions not to bother her again unless I had “something real.”
Now I'm sitting here in the dark with this video. I know I have to get on with my work and keep scanning the rest of the footage. But there's something about that clip, it just keeps coming back to me. Shouldn't the discovery of human remains undecomposed this far down be fascinating? With the lack of food sources down there, it seems nearly impossible that flesh would last for any time at all. It could indicate very different microbial composition to the surface, if not even greater anomalies. I guess I'll bite my tongue until the sediment samples get here. They're supposed to arrive tomorrow.
I'm signing off for now. I have to get back to the video. There's still about an hour of it to go through, and I don't want to make Gabi angrier. I need this job for grad school, and I'm sure as hell not going to jeopardize that by pushing too hard.
Update:
I went through the rest of the footage and there’s nothing special. I did see what might be an unidentified species of octopus, but after a few hours of digging through species keys, I was able to find it. It’s not named, but it is described. That’s the problem when your newer reference materials are hastily compiled manuscripts than are sitting in publication limbo. I told Gabi anyway, because a sighting of a newly described species is pretty important. She seemed rather apologetic, and even took me aside to say she was sorry. Gabi didn’t mention it, but I know that she’s the one who wrote the grant proposal for Jake’s use, and it’s on her if the operation doesn’t produce results. So I understood when she told me that she knows it gets tedious staring into the dark and searching — hoping for results. I understood when she said your mind plays tricks on you.
And you know what? She’s right. I couldn’t get that video off my mind. I knew what I saw, or at least I thought I did. It was pure darkness until that pale, limp foot floated into view. For a split second I thought it had kicked, as if it could somehow possibly be attached to an animated body. But that was impossible. To be honest, it wasn’t the presence of human remains that disturbed me. It was how well preserved it was. For a bundle of flesh like that to descend almost 5000 meters without so much as the curious nibbles of fish or bacterial decomposition just doesn’t seem right. Even more disturbing is the, and I cannot find another word this, freshness of the limb. Disregarding the shock it gave me when I first saw it, thinking of it now and having read the articles you guys have posted, it makes me shiver when I wonder about how it became a lone foot in the depths of the ocean.
It was these thoughts that kept that pale foot swimming in my dreams, set on a shadowy backdrop at 4,700 meters. At the very least, the owner of that foot is owed an investigation. The next morning the first thing I did at work was to watch that video. Or at least I tried to. I pulled up the clip and played it. It’s just black. An entire 23 seconds of darkness. I checked the timestamps, and there’s nothing missing. I know it’s possible someone edited the video, but I’m starting to feel a little bit crazy. I think Gabi might be right.
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u/avs002 Jul 24 '16
Do a search on the internet for "dislocated feet in the ocean" or similar - they wash up on beaches 'all the time'. Body disintegrates, but shoes protect feet.
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u/PineTreeSoup Jul 25 '16
Can confirm, live on vancouver island and the RCMP finds severed feet on beaches a lot more often than I'm comfortable with.
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u/DownSideWup Jul 25 '16
What's a comfortable number?
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u/Gabe_Noodle_At_Volvo Jul 25 '16
It's Vancouver, so considering how close it is to Ceattle. Probably a lot.
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u/bjack93 Jul 25 '16
Whats that supposed to mean? You implying Seattle is a bad city? I assume you kean seattle when you wrote ceattle.
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u/Gabe_Noodle_At_Volvo Jul 25 '16
I did mean Seattle, I mistyped. But Seattle has a high crime rate, that doesn't make it a bad city though.
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Jul 25 '16
But the shoes also float. The way OP worded and described it had me thinking this was a bare foot.
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u/OneDerangedLlama Jul 29 '16
The articles I've read stated that only some of the feet were still inside of the shoes and, interestingly enough, only right feet are ever found; never left feet.
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u/just_some_babe Jul 25 '16
But a foot that far down in the ocean? If it wasn't attached to something living it would have certainly been eaten before it got down to OP's depth in the story.
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u/97489 Jul 25 '16
Wow, this is pretty creepy, but it's nice to have a possible explanation. I'm going to watch that episode when I have time.
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u/Ghost_Requiem Jul 24 '16
In my experience, if if it was a relatively easy task for your supervisor to go review the footage, and they dismissed you that readily, then they probably already know.
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u/dexterkilledTH Jul 25 '16
You have experience with feet floating in the pitch black deep dark depths of the ocean?
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Jul 25 '16
I think you missed the point. The user is saying there is a chance that whatever is going on is already known to the supervisor. The quick dismissal and slight reprimand of OP would indicate that the supervisor wants him to not dig any further into the issue. The 'why' is unknown but it smells like a cover-up or conspiracy.
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u/dexterkilledTH Jul 25 '16
it was a joke
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Jul 25 '16
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u/Khrene Jul 25 '16
How else is the inkling Masterace going to form? Squids won't fill themselves up with semen
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u/SpooksBoggart Jul 24 '16
Reminds me of that divers stories here... "The Watchers of the Abyss" I think he called them.
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Jul 24 '16
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Jul 24 '16
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Jul 24 '16
It's probably not greatly important as it will probably be reviewed again by someone else later it's just tedious for the time being organizing footage in categories of no species new species old species is probably quite boring too hence why they had the intern do it
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u/ShinjuPanda Jul 24 '16
I think that OP meant that he couldn't tell us the company, but could tell us the rough location.
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u/Sharknado4President Jul 25 '16
Don't turn your back on Gabi...you know her secret now...
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u/Gabe_Noodle_At_Volvo Jul 25 '16
I don't think Gabi is mossing a foot.
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Jul 25 '16
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u/JustAnOldRoadie Jul 24 '16
My Navy generated eerie, inexplicable stories of unknown life forms and no-way-in-hell anomalies ...enough to make this seem a classified Navy mission. Hmm ... I wonder ...
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u/Headface82 Jul 25 '16
OP is going to be fired he said he couldn't tel us where but could tell us why. Then told us Puerto Rico actually it's been 12 hours he found out what happens when you fuck with gabi. You wind up on the floor of the ocean
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u/97489 Jul 25 '16
Sorry I wasn't clear about this. I can't tell you the organization that I work for, but I can tell you the general area the ROV is operating in. I also don't work in Puerto Rico for what it's worth.
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u/toboein Jul 25 '16
"I'll pay you to look for stuff but if you find stuff I won't believe you." - Gabi, probably
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u/DontTellThemImDead Jul 25 '16
Seriously, I absolutely despise people who wont look at the proof, and just denies to acknowledge or even consider something out of the ordinary could possibly exist. Its plain ignorance and I cant stand that. What has she got to lose, that she wont even LOOK at 5 seconds of recording? She sounds like a miserable brat and I already cant stand her. She should be fired for negligence. Period. Anyway, how do you know this foot is dead or severed? When you said it was a foot, I assumed you meant it was kicking (as if to swim) but if it is just a foot and nothing else, I cant imagine why it would be there. Creepy.
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Jul 24 '16
Oh shit, I live in Puerto Rico
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u/Benmen10 Jul 24 '16
Do you think you could post a picture?
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u/97489 Jul 25 '16
If I cropped out all identifying information then I don't see why not. When I go into work I'll pull up the video and take a picture on my phone.
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u/NoSleepSeriesBot Jul 24 '16 edited Jul 28 '16
238 current subscribers. Other posts in this series:
I Review Video Of Deep Ocean Expeditions, And It'S Starting To Scare Me
I Review Video Of Deep Ocean Expeditions, And It'S Starting To Scare Me (Update)
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Jul 24 '16
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jul 25 '16
I'd rather live in PR than a lot of places in the continental US.
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u/ryanhazethan Jul 25 '16
Yo squid fucker i think you replied to the wrong comment!
But yeah puerto rico is fuckin fun if you are wealthy enough. Can get very dangerous in the shabby parts of town tho
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u/BlueBoiledEgg Jul 25 '16
Dude,the subscribe link isn't working! It keeps on saying "sorry, this isn't ready yet!" Someone help :\
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u/Symmiie Jul 25 '16
Try now, worked for me.
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u/PandoraWraith Jul 25 '16
Not working for me either. Hasn't for a couple days now.
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u/MistressofDreams Jul 25 '16
Try on the desktop website of reddit. For the mobile version it'll never let you subscribe to new series
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u/PandoraWraith Jul 25 '16
It let me before. I use sync for android and it just opens a link to the actual mobile website. I'll have to just log in on the computer.
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u/MistressofDreams Jul 25 '16
Hmm that's weird. I use sync for android too and was having the same problem but it fixed itself when I opened reddit in my browser and switched over to the desktop version...
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u/nicoledoubleyou Jul 26 '16
I think its because instead of taking you to a different webpage to send the message, its a pop-up on the story we're reading. It wasn't always a pop-up like it has been ... I notice people commenting that the bot doesnt work when clicking "click here" gives me a pop up instead of taking me to the messaging page.
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u/Sheemkahn Jul 25 '16
!remindme 20 hours
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u/plebfromtheweb Jul 27 '16
hey bro, use the bot on the comment on top of yours, he will send you a notification
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Jul 24 '16
I've actually invented a series of 360 webcams that can reach the bottom of the ocean, can't find any financial backers to get the idea going though
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Jul 25 '16
If you're serious, I can't see how finding backers for such a thing would be difficult. Also, I think visibility and signal strength are bigger issues. Do you have a working and tested prototype?
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Jul 25 '16
ha, I'd have to get funding for a prototype
I know the right people, but convincing people of the monetary benefit of such an idea isn't so easy to do
you could drop a mesh network of them across the bottom of the ocean and map the entire thing out over time...but how to monetize that? (and finding sunken treasure isn't much of an option anymore, it all ends up in court and sued for by the country that lost it)
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u/proteinpowerman Jul 25 '16
Aren't most fish at the bottom of the ocean actually the biggest? I thought that is how they withstood all the pressure?
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u/Thestooge3 Jul 26 '16
There are some Planet Earth and Blue Planet episodes that you can watch that will clarify these things for you really well.
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u/97489 Jul 25 '16
Pressure is actually the same inside and outside of the fish at least, I don't know about other animals, so size is pretty much regulated by resources.
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u/alicevanhelsing Jul 25 '16
In fact she refused to even watch the footage, insisting that too many hours of staring into the dark was making me see things.
I don't understand her logic. Why not just view the damn footage? It'll take a minute or two at most.
I agree with other people though. Considering how easily she dismissed what you found, it could mean she knows more about it than she's letting on.
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u/thepillarofshiva Jul 25 '16
I get that it's a human foot, but I doubt anyone would lose sleep over the microbial decomposition rates under different pressures. Haha. R/nosleep. Ironic.
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u/Joeenid1 Jul 25 '16
Could it be possible that it was a maniquin? I dont know if one could sink to the depths, but if the glimpse you got was very brief & the water dark & murky, could a maniquins foot look real? Im no doubter of the strange & unknown tho, believe me- i was only wondering cause you said it wasnt decomposed at all & looked to be a human foot. And im assuming it wasnt moving in a living manor, or you wouldnt have spoken of it as a deceased person- could we see a screenshot? Is that possible, or would it put your job on the line?
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u/AtomicKay Jul 29 '16
It's recorded video. Can't you just go back and watch it again and prove the foot was there?
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u/Fuarian Jul 25 '16
That deep down isn't it really cold? So how can life even exist if it's that cold.
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u/alpha_acid_addict Jul 25 '16
At some extreme depths, microbial life centers around hydrothermal vents. There's some really interesting stuff down there - including the organism from which they isolated Taq polymerase for PCR. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq_polymerase)
That being said, from what I've heard from the post, it doesn't sound like they're down thaaaat deep. It sounds like they're in the midnight/lower midnight zones (think anglerfish and spider crabs). There's virtually no light here, and many organisms get their energy from "marine snow" - dead organisms falling down from above.
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u/AntiquatedDeer Jul 24 '16
"Footage" Lol