It's Not the Squid Fishing Fleet: Part 2

In my last post, I shared my personal reasons for naming my hand embroidery shop Squid Fishing Fleet. I wrote:

To me, the phrase "squid fishing fleet" has come to represent the mixed nuts of UFO studies: its fringe intrigue, its Americana lore, its kitsch, its rainbow of personalities shining in shades of respectability, sympathy, amusement, curiosity, and actual bullshit. 

It also stands for legit wonder. That adolescent passion for believing impossible things.

But, it's not just me connecting fleets of squid fishing boats with UFOs. It's REAL.

Earth Observatory

As recent as 2014, the International Space Station capture images of dense light off the coast of Thailand. From a distance on the water, as pictured above, these same lights could seem otherworldly. To flip the words of Dr. Bruce Maccabee, it's actually the squid fishing fleet.
 
According to NASA's Earth Observatory: "Scientists first noted such night-lighting of the seas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while compiling the first maps of Earth at night."

At night, fleets of fishing boats cluster over nutrient-rich, southern Pacific waters. Rigged with LED lights to lure a small species of squid, the boats light up the absolute darkness.

It's all very magical seeming when you see images like the above, but a common place for these suckered squid to end up is in an air-locked package like that of popular Japanese snack.

Squid Jerky!

Unless one knows about the squid fishing fleets, with their bright clear lights that seem to hover still and silent, it may rightly freak a person out.

That's why in the documentary UFO's Are Real Maccabee talks about his studies of the December 31, 1978 sighting off the coast of New Zealand. The former Navy physicist talks about thoroughly and as dryly as those jerky treats, but there's a tasty morsel of the quirkiness, facetiousness or innocence, that is what always draws me in to these kinds of stories.

Maccabee's site reads:

         Subsequently, Philip J. Klass published the squid boat explanation in his book, UFOs, THE PUBLIC DECEIVED (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1983). After citing his reasons for agreeing with Ireland and Andrews, Klass wrote, "If the bright object photographed in Pegasus Bay was not a squid boat, the only plausible alternative is that it was an extraterrestrial craft from a distant world."

         Could that be true? Is it possible that the light was not from a squid boat and therefore was from a ET craft?
         The following paper shows why it was not a squid boat....unless it was a

flying squid boat.

I can only take Maccabee's word, with his serious math and stuff, on what the New Zealand footage shows. Or not. But whether it's a real unidentifiable space craft, a hoax, Venus, Jupiter, mating mutton birds, or the squid fishing fleet isn't the point to me.

It's random pictures of a guy in a row boat staring at a glowing light on the horizon, taken out of context. It's what I said about the off-the-record, off-center cultural meme and all the characters playing a part.