2016-12-13 - Atlantic Ocean - Other

Immobile, post-like object over deep water in the Atlantic Ocean.

I was aboard the Holland America cruise-ship, Eurodam. Most of that afternoon, I had been sitting in a deck chair, watching the sea through which we were passing about one hundred miles off Cuba's east coast, bound for the Bahama island of Grand Turk, where we would arrive the following morning.

All that day, Tuesday, I saw no floating debris, signs of marine life, or seaweed, until precisely 17:00 hours (5:00 p.m., ship's time). At first to the left of my perspective (I was looking due south), I observed an object that resembled the top of a post standing above the surface of the ocean, within thirty-five to forty feet out from the starboard side of our vessel. It stood three to four feet high, was approximately eighteen inches in diameter, seemed entirely round, with a tapering, rounded top; was uniformly featureless and dark in color, perhaps black; in shape, it somewhat resembled a human thumb. Most remarkably, the object was absolutely rooted in place, completely unmoving, as those driven solidly into the seabed, about two thousand feet under the Eurodam 's keel. The object was not afloat or bobbing with the waves, which instead broke around it, and never altered its unchanging position during the five or six seconds I kept it in view. For a moment, I suspected that it may have been the periscope of a passing submarine, but almost instantaneously dismissed such an interpretation, because no sub commander would so gravely risk his vessel by taking it within forty feet of the Eurodam's extremely turbulent wake. No other debris, etc. was observed on the surface of the sea the rest of that day. I forwarded a written description of the Tuesday sighting to our Captain, explaining my concern that the object may have been a navigational hazard of some kind. I am not sure that it entirely falls under the category of Unidentified Submerged Object, because at least part of it protruded above the water.