Fishy images of a glowing red sea

There is a phenomenon that stumped people when it first appeared, including the pilots who documented it – bright red lighted spots in the sea. Puzzling at first, the explanation was eventually discovered, and solidly confirmed. But this week, I noticed a less diligent weather commentator in Greece is getting attention for reposting images from several years ago, with a slightly different context, but without the explanation. This has led to another surge in interest, including from tabloid “newz” sites and their overly excited commenters.

July 2022 sighting that went viral

Back in July 2022, I included a news blip about the strange sighting of a red glow in the sea in my Substack Weekly Weird Newsletter (now inactive). Commercial pilot Dustin Maggard had spotted the red glow in the Pacific Ocean while flying at 39,000 feet. Soon after, when the images spread online, weather experts identified the cause – fishing boats with LED lights.

Imaginative commenters at the time suggested these lights were all sorts of things – volcanism, fires or burning oil spills, nuclear submarines, aliens, HAARP, a portal to another dimension, etc. Note that Stranger Things was trending at the time. Some people love to make those kinds of kooky quips in comments.

Fishing boats and their red lights

American weather modeler Neil Jacobs confirmed these red spots were boats using LED lights. The exact ships could be located in the spot at that time using a website that tracks vessels. The French website, The Observers, also had a weather expert check and confirmed the same.

The bright lights are used to attract fish to the surface, namely schools of “saury” (mackerel pike), common in Asian cuisine. Lights (usually green) are also used for catching squid. Fleets of lighted boats can be seen from space.

Other incidents of red glows or bright spots on the ocean have also been reported.

This July incident was also reported by other web sources as being in the Atlantic after the photos appeared on Reddit. Again, they didn’t do great fact checking. I could not readily find the exact location where the pilots reported the lights but the better sources that quote the pilot say it was the Pacific.

A 2014 incident investigated

Another pilot (Christiaan van Heijst – a Dutch 747 captain with over 10,000 flying hours and twenty years of flying experience) noticed a cluster of red lights in the sea in 2014. It was so startling, he reported the incident and gave the photos to scientific analysts who found the lights, as described, visible on satellite imagery from the time and location. The incident appeared on an episode of Discovery Channel’s show ‘NASA’s Unexplained Files’ where they considered volcanism, high altitude lightning (sprites), and Russian military testing. They managed to converge on the source being ships, but didn’t make the connection to fish lights.

Van Heijst originally proposed it might be fishing boats but the location was odd. Because the sighting occurred just after two large earthquakes (in San Francisco and Chile), he wondered if these were earthquake lights. However, in 2022, he updated his web site report by explaining that it was most likely a Chinese saury fishing fleet.

Blood red sky

Here is another similar experience from 2020, caught in a photo by a pilot over the Pacific (Dmitriy / @deltaoscarstudio). You can see how the sea surface lights are reflected by the clouds.

In May of 2022, the night sky above Zhoushan, China turned deep red due to the lights from the boats refracted in the drizzly, cloudy skies. That incident frightened local people who saw the eerie sky. They assumed it was not good news, maybe a fire, or worse. Several people recorded images of the event.

Greek mystery mongering

This week, I noticed a glowing red sea story circulating that pointed to a Facebook post from Greek “weather forecaster and analyst”, Theofanis Chatzigrivas. I went to his FB page and found that he was showing the same photos from the 2022 story but saying they were taken in the Atlantic Ocean. No other details were provided.

Notice that he says “They could never explain the red coloring in the clouds over the Atlantic Ocean”. The obvious questions arise about where he gets his information, and why he wouldn’t have known about this previous debunking of the lights from 2022? Did he not do any research? That’s not uncommon for those personalities looking to gain followers and fans. Posting interesting content is more important sometimes than doing any work to provide context or sound information. I don’t know much about Mr. Chatzigrivas because his content is all in Greek. It does seem like he provides regular weather forecasting. However, even after several people in the comments mentioned the 2022 source of the photos, and the true nature of the lights, he ignored that and even reposted the photos again with the same mystery mongering. So, he’s not a serious person.

Eager to capitalize on clicks, some news aggregator sites, like “newsincyprus.com” and “in-cyprus.philenews.com” simply reposted Chatzigrivas’ Facebook post. There was no link back to the source and no mention of the real, and well-known, cause. The stories were made to look like factual news of a true mystery:

I don’t have to elaborate on how news sites today are sad excuses for information, and mostly cause misinformation to spread.

I thought it would be worthwhile to add another take on the red glows so that maybe the next sensationalistic take on the fishing boat lights won’t go so far. And maybe Mr. Chatzigrivas will pay attention and do at least a little δέουσα επιμέλεια (due diligence).

#fishingBoats #mysteriousLights #mystery #redClouds #redGlow #redLights #redSky

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