Mysterious red glow over the Atlantic Ocean sends viewers in panic

On Friday 22 July 2022, a pilot shared a series of striking and disturbing pictures on the social network Reddit. While flying over the Atlantic Ocean, the man witnessed a scene worthy of a science fiction scenario, as huge bright red halos appeared for no apparent reason in the thick cloud cover above him. Was that luminous apparition due to a paranormal phenomenon?

Red lights over the Atlantic Ocean

As is often the case, Internet users rushed to these barely believable pictures to try to find a more rational explanation for them. Unsurprisingly, many of them leaned towards the tempting but unlikely explanation of the paranormal phenomenon.

'The new season of Stranger Things looks crazy,' quipped one Reddit user. 'The rift is open, the Kaiju are coming,' adds another, this time in reference to the action movie Pacific Rim. 'It's so hot there are even fires in the ocean now,' wrote a third.

But as was to be expected, the most plausible explanation points not to an alien invasion but rather to... fishing boats.

Fishing boats equipped with LEDs?

Indeed, an increasing number of vessels are using LED lights, sometimes in very large quantities, in order to attract fish to them. These can be visible up to several kilometres away. This is not the first time the phenomenon has been reported. In 2014, another pilot made a very similar observation during a flight over the Pacific Ocean, on board a Boeing 747. The airline pilot said.

I saw an intense orange-red light appear in front of us, and it was a little strange because there was supposed to be nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see below us,

More recently, in February 2020, a great shot was taken from the International Space Station (ISS) also witnessed the phenomenon. Released by NASA, the image shows a large green expanse in the middle of the sea off the coast of Thailand. The US space agency wrote in the caption:

The adjacent waters of the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand are lit by hundreds of green lights on fishing boats. Fishermen use the lights to attract plankton and fish, the preferred diet of commercially important squid,

This article was translated from Gentside FR.

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