A Teen Filmed the Glowing Water From a Cruise Ship’s Pool Deck. Then Something the Size of a Lifeboat Came Up
A 17-year-old filmed glowing Caribbean water from a cruise ship during a pool party, until an eel-like creature breached and a second, bigger shape rose behind it.
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Kayla Simmons, 17, from Tampa, had been begging her parents for a cruise for three years. When they finally booked a seven-night Caribbean trip for her senior year spring break, she planned every outfit. On the fourth night, somewhere between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, she wore a pink sundress and a glow bracelet from the deck party and went to the top of the ship with her phone.
The upper deck was packed. String lights zigzagged over the pool. A DJ was playing heavy bass. Hundreds of passengers were dancing, drinking, and taking selfies under the stars.
“Look How Clear the Water Is”
Kayla’s video starts at the rail. She is laughing, leaning over to film the sea far below. The water is glowing a soft, eerie blue. Bioluminescence is common in warm Caribbean waters, tiny organisms that light up when the water is disturbed, and the ship’s wake had them shining like neon.
“Look how clear the water is,” she says.
Then the glow moves. An enormous shape slides beneath the hull, lighting up the plankton as it passes. It is long and eel-like, and it keeps coming. Kayla says, “Wait. Wait, what is that?” and zooms in.
The Breach
Behind her, the music keeps thumping. Nobody else has noticed yet. Then the head comes up out of the water beside the ship.
It is crested, with a ridge of spines along the top, and it is as wide as one of the lifeboats hanging on the side of the deck. Water cascades off armored scales that flash in the ship’s deck lights. It rises higher and higher, level with the lower decks, then higher still.
That is when people start screaming.
The Lifeboat
The video shows the creature lunging at the side of the ship. It bites down on a lifeboat davit, the steel arm that holds a lifeboat in place. Metal crunches. The lifeboat swings loose and smashes against the hull, and a window on a lower deck bursts in a spray of glass.
The upper deck becomes a stampede. Passengers run for the doors. A deck chair slides past Kayla’s feet as the ship rocks. The DJ’s music finally stops.
A hand grabs Kayla’s arm. It is her dad, 45, in a Hawaiian shirt, his face white. “Kayla, move!”
The Second Shape
She runs. But she does not stop filming, and as her dad pulls her toward the stairwell, her phone is pointing backward over her shoulder at the sea.
That is how the camera catches it. Out past the first creature, maybe a few hundred yards from the ship, a second glow is spreading across the water. It is far, far bigger. As it surfaces, its silhouette blocks out the reflection of the moon. The video freezes on that silhouette for a fraction of a second before Kayla reaches the door.
What Happened After
The cruise line has confirmed that the ship “experienced damage to a lifeboat and a lower deck window from contact with a large marine animal” and that no passengers were seriously injured. Several people were treated for minor cuts and one for a sprained ankle from the stampede. The ship changed course and sailed directly to Grand Cayman, arriving a day early.
Passengers say the crew ordered everyone to stay inside for the rest of the night and closed every outdoor deck. Some say they felt the ship shudder twice more before dawn. Others say they heard a long, low sound through the hull, like a foghorn underwater.
The Experts Weigh In
Marine scientists who reviewed Kayla’s clip have offered careful explanations. Oarfish, the longest bony fish in the world, can reach more than 25 feet and have a red crest along their heads. They are rarely seen alive at the surface. But no known oarfish is anywhere close to the size of what the video shows, and oarfish have no teeth capable of biting through steel.
“I can tell you what it is not,” one researcher said. “I can’t tell you what it is.”
The second shape is the part that keeps people up at night. Some viewers think it was the first creature’s mother. Others point out that the first creature turned and dove the moment the second one surfaced, almost as if it were afraid.
Kayla Today
Kayla’s video has been viewed tens of millions of times. She has done interviews, been invited onto podcasts, and received hundreds of messages from people who say they have seen something similar from ships and oil rigs over the years.
She graduated in May. Her parents say they are taking a road trip for the next family vacation. Kayla says she is fine with that. She still has the glow bracelet. It stopped glowing a long time ago, but she keeps it anyway.
More Stories Like This
If this one gave you chills, read our stories about the deckhand who filmed tentacles grabbing a container ship, the fishermen who pulled up something they could not identify, and the beach wedding interrupted by a tsunami siren. The ocean is still full of surprises.
