1995-01-19 - Cancun (Mexico) - Chevron

Glowing objects flying over Cancun

While on a business trip to Cancun, an associate and I were the only tourists lounging by the unlit hotel pool and gazing at the stars. We simultaneously observed what we thought was a shooting star streak across the sky. As we "ahhed" in pleasure at the sight, the "shooting star" stopped above our heads and reversed direction. We immediately became silent and confused when another "shooting star" streaked back toward us crossing the path of the first object at a sharp angle.

At this point, we both confirmed that we were actually seeing the same thing. The objects both turned and then slowly headed back toward each other and appeared to come together and turned away at extremely tight angles. As we watched, another object streaked across the paths of the first two.

During the time we watched, these lightly glowing objects continued to streak across the travel paths of each other. They moved slowly when they were grouped near each other and we could see that they were more or less chevron shaped with the entire shape being defined by a clear, visible glow. The glow was about the same intensity of the surrounding stars with a greenish tint to the light they appeared to emit.

All of their movement was in straight lines or at sharp angles, creating invisible triangular travel paths as they flew past and crossed over each other. Occasionally, they would come together for a fraction of a second only to break away quickly in different angular patterns.

One of the hotel employees was cleaning the pool. He did not speak English and my Spanish was quite rusty. However, when I asked about what we were observing, I understood him to explain that these were birds and they glowed because of the plankton in the waters that that also glowed.

The explanation seemed acceptable to a point. That could certainly explain the greenish glow and the chevron shape. However, I live in an area where there are a lot of hawks and falcons that fly on the thermals created in the hills of my community. I have not seen any of these birds flying in the angular patterns that I observed. Their turns tend to be more gentle and curved. I have seen none of these birds come together but would allow that at night, seeing the objects seemingly meet may have been an illusion as one object could have been above or below the other. This does not explain how the objects would consistently appear to break away from each other and travel in different directions but I feel that even some of those observations could also be attributed to illusion and vision impairment created by the night skies.

Perhaps the most extraordinary behavior that gives me pause to question the bird explanation more than any other is the fact that all of their movement appeared to be in straight lines with all turns seemingly to be accomplished only with sharp angular movement. I have since attempted to research sea bird sightings under similar circumstances and watch the movement of other groups of birds but have found no descriptions that seem to fit my experience.

At this time, I cannot say for sure that what I saw but they were not shooting stars. However, I have seen that other visitors to Cancun have described similar sightings at later dates.