Cruise Ship Captain Reports Silent "Black Jellyfish" Flying In "No Wind, Maybe 5 Knots"

LorentzHall

Member
Captain Kate McCue, apparently the first American woman to captain a mega cruise ship, says she was preparing to fly her personal drone one day when she looked up & saw what "looked like a gigantic black jellyfish" flying over her ship.

She captured a smartphone video & posted to TikTok.




The TikTok video was posted back in June 2020, when the incident happened, but the case is more recently gaining popularity due to her account of it in this YouTube video (taken from some cruise ship conference I believe).

NOTE: the video shown side-by-side on the YouTube video is not the TikTok video she's referring to. Ignore that.



McCue claims there was nowhere near sufficient wind to account for its movements, and that it "disappeared into the water". An experienced amateur drone pilot herself, McCue claims it was not a drone and there was no noise.
 
maybe someone of her own ship let some balloons fly.

i dont know if she was near the shore somehow but it linda looks like these canopies they pull with a boat to let you fly

(the fact she didnt hear anything can be neglected. based on the distance there could be a lot of noise not audible from a running cruise ship on sea)
 
I begin to think we need a massive PSA campaign on the theme of "This is what balloons look like, and how they behave." Because to me that sure looks and behaves exactly like a balloon.
(I also admit to some disappointment, I was expecting something a LOT more dramatic from "a gigantic black jellyfish...")
 
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Vertically elongated blob with a bigger diameter on top. Moving laterally at a low, constant, silent pace. Yeah, cannot be a balloon. :rolleyes:
 
Low Information Zone. It's dark, and it's a poor camera. Pity nobody on the ship had binoculars.

It appears to be windbourne, slowly sinking. Keeps its shape (rotates a little). Balloon #1
 
Vertically elongated blob with a bigger diameter on top. Moving laterally at a low, constant, silent pace. Yeah, cannot be a balloon. :rolleyes:
sorry not everything is a balloon. what is more likely, that every ufo sighting is a balloon or chinese lanterns or a weather phenomenon OR that its actually a gravity defying ET craft? Its obvious it must be ET.

/s
 
if that object is 10 miles away, it has to be higher than 450 feet... right?

(i ask because there is a balloon ride that can go 450 feet up. but to not see the land the ship would have to be at least 10 miles away. she says they are 12 miles away in Instagram write up).
 
Is it a Falcon re-entry...?

Post date is 4 July 2020. There was no Falcon launch on that day. The most recent one was 30 June 2020. It's possible she posted it 5 days later, but she posted other content between those days so seems unlikely.

Here's a link to that 30 June 2020 landing. It looks to be late afternoon, whereas her Instagram video seems to be at sunrise or sunset.

Whatever that is, it's travelling rather fast. Either it was coming head on to the camera at first, or it displayed serious acceleration. It also seems to either travel directly away from the camera at the end, or else pause in mid-air.
 
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Post date is 4 July 2020. There was no Falcon launch on that day. The most recent one was 30 June 2020. It's possible she posted it 5 days later, but she posted other content between those days so seems unlikely.
By looking at the pictures on 'her' Instagram account it is apparent that is a managed account. She's certainly not taking all the photos and posting them. There could have been a lag between taking this video and posting it.
 
Here's a link to that 30 June 2020 landing. It looks to be late afternoon, whereas her Instagram video seems to be at sunrise or sunset.
If it is a Falcon re entry then the rocket is heading back to Cape Kennedy, which means to the right in the video is West. The lighter sky seems to be to the left of the video, which would then be East, suggesting that this is at sunrise and a morning launch.

Screenshot_20210708-214624.png
13th June launch was at 09.21 UTC which, assuming the ship is off the Florida coast, would be a time of 5.21 EST.

Can we find out where the ship was at this time and date?
 
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If it is a Falcon re entry then the rocket is heading back to Cape Kennedy, which means to the right in the video is West. The lighter sky seems to be to the left of the video, which would then be East, suggesting that this is at sunrise and a morning launch.

Screenshot_20210708-214624.png
13th June launch way at 09.21 UTC which, assuming the ship is off the Florida coast, would be a time of 5.21 EST.

Can we find out where the ship was at this time and date?

There was that open ship data that we got for the container ship what was in the Omaha radar video..

Which has no data for 2021 of course because you probably need to pay for recent data.
 
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So the post on Instagram before the ufo video suggests they were in the Bahamas the day before....

Screenshot_20210708-225402.png

Screenshot_20210708-225518.png
 
I downloaded the file for the Falcon launch date, quick search for CELEBRITY in 1st 1 million rows didn't reveal the CELEBTRITY EDGE but did reveal other CELBRITY ships so I'll have to import the full file into MySQL to check. Unless it might be known/registered as another name.
 
Screenshot_20210708-224942.png

Seems to be known as CELEBRITY EDGE ok.

And looking through other Instagram posts I think it sailed from Miami around the 10th June 2020 towards the Caribbean, so it seems to be in the right area, but can't confirm it yet.
 
Or is rather small and close.

So a drone? McCue is a drone pilot & carries a drone onboard. You can see dozens of drone videos from her ship on her Instagram & TikTok. Would she really be calling a drone a UFO?

So the post on Instagram before the ufo video suggests they were in the Bahamas

Yes, looking at her Instagram posts, the Celebrity Edge was docked in the Bahamas the entire time. It's in exactly the right location to witness a drone ship Falcon landing.

Only problem is, why would she post the video 3 weeks later, using present tense, despite posting other content in those 3 weeks?

(for what it's worth, I now think it's very likely this is in fact that Falcon landing, good job)
 
sorry not everything is a balloon. what is more likely, that every ufo sighting is a balloon or chinese lanterns or a weather phenomenon OR that its actually a gravity defying ET craft? Its obvious it must be ET.

/s
I think Feynman said it best:

“From my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.”
 
So a drone? McCue is a drone pilot & carries a drone onboard. You can see dozens of drone videos from her ship on her Instagram & TikTok. Would she really be calling a drone a UFO?
if she was joking she would. i assumed it was her drone and she was joking when i saw that vid.
 
“From my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.”

Probability only truly exists at the quantum level. "Likelihood" of macroscopic events is a human heuristic. A non-real abstraction.

Besides, can we please stop with this dichotomy that UAP are either identification failure (yes 99.9999% are) or extra-terrestrials? Aerial anomalies could have many many causes. Even the idea of intelligent agency is assuming too much.
 
This is the video of the launch and landing of Starlink 8 on 13 June 2020. Looking at the landing, (timecode 23m30s) the amount of daylight in the sky seems to fit what is seen the the Cruise Ship Video.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8riKQXChPGg

landing.JPG

However..... the location of the droneship that the Stage 1 landed upon seems to be north of the Carribean, Hmmm.

orbit.JPG

Actually, after thinking about it, the position of the ship in the Caribbean and the trajectory of the first stage booster world fit in with the video if it was looking north. The boosters trajectory is taking it in a North Easterly flight path.
 
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It takes a long old time to import a days CSV into MySQL (3 hours and still going).

Which specific days do we want to positions for the cruise ship for?

30/6/2020 13/05/2020?
 
It takes a long old time to import a days CSV into MySQL (3 hours and still going).

Which specific days do we want to positions for the cruise ship for?

30/6/2020 13/05/2020?

I'd initially suggest 13 June 2020, as that is when the likely SpaceX launch was.
 
I'd initially suggest 13 June 2020, as that is when the likely SpaceX launch was.
I found a CSV reader capable of reading the full files (8-9 million rows) relatively quickly

https://kothar.net/csview

There's mention of CELEBRITY EDGE in either 2020_06_13 or 2020_06_30

Other CELEBRITY ships are listed I guess this dataset might not cover the area required, it says "The data available below contain records for U.S. coastal waters for calendar years 2009 through 2020"

I guess if we have a known date the ship was in US Coastal waters we could check.

https://marinecadastre.gov/ais/

1625829345068.png
 
Hmm, I still think that the video shows a Falcon rocket and landing burn, however the location of the ship and the trajectory of the launch on 13 June seems off to me. I think it is too far away to be seen as it was 460 miles away.

Screen Shot 2021-07-09 at 14.06.10.png
 
Hmm, I still think that the video shows a Falcon rocket and landing burn, however the location of the ship and the trajectory of the launch on 13 June seems off to me. I think it is too far away to be seen as it was 460 miles away.

Screen Shot 2021-07-09 at 14.06.10.png
You can see stuff like that at high altitude from some distance, I once witnessed a launch from the UK. Maybe it wouldn't have looked like the event in the video though from that range..
 
As always on Metabunk, I am easily confused. So, I think we have 2 videos from the lady on the boat. Did she see it twice? And if so, why do they look so different? Or did she only see one, but which one?

Questions.. questions...
 
As always on Metabunk, I am easily confused. So, I think we have 2 videos from the lady on the boat. Did she see it twice? And if so, why do they look so different? Or did she only see one, but which one?

Questions.. questions...
Flarkey added a second claim to this thread. There are two alleged "sightings" a month apart. of two different things. i believe she personally filmed and personally uploaded both.

edit: why other members are trying to find off date events that would explain this second ufo, i dont know.
 
Flarkey added a second claim to this thread. There are two alleged "sightings" a month apart. of two different things. i believe she personally filmed and personally uploaded both.

edit: why other members are trying to find off date events that would explain this second ufo, i dont know.
We don't have confirmed dates for the filming of the second video just an upload date to social media. Always annoying in these cases when we don't have the full data.

The second video looks a bit like a possible Falcon launch and the sailing to the Caribbean from Florida is not a a million miles away from it being a possibility.
 
We don't have confirmed dates for the filming of the second video just an upload date to social media. Always annoying in these cases when we don't have the full data.

The second video looks a bit like a possible Falcon launch and the sailing to the Caribbean from Florida is not a a million miles away from it being a possibility.
True. but that's really pushing it to assume the video was taken like 2 weeks or more before she uploaded it.

i mean, i dont mind you guys enjoying yourself with the speculations but i personally wouldnt consider such ideas an explanation of her events. i did scroll her instagram and my impression is she uploads fairly consistently the events of her days as they happen.
 
True. but that's really pushing it to assume the video was taken like 2 weeks or more before she uploaded it.

i mean, i dont mind you guys enjoying yourself with the speculations but i personally wouldnt consider such ideas an explanation of her events. i did scroll her instagram and my impression is she uploads fairly consistently the events of her days as they happen.
@deirdre I totally agree, and until we get the date and time that the video was recorded it is all speculation. However, we're not just guessing. We have a hypothesis that we are testing and trying to falsify. Nothing wrong with speculating until more data comes along.
 
until more data comes along.
maybe someone could ask her. i know it's fun to speculate amongst ourselves, but this site is really for outside readers looking for answers and it kinda makes you guys look pretty desperate to come up with anything to explain away her video, (that she might have been labeling ufo sarcastically).

Not that outside readers will read this far into a thread for a real answer anyway... so carry on.
 
maybe someone could ask her. i know it's fun to speculate amongst ourselves, but this site is really for outside readers looking for answers and it kinda makes you guys look pretty desperate to come up with anything to explain away her video, (that she might have been labeling ufo sarcastically).

Not that outside readers will read this far into a thread for a real answer anyway... so carry on.

Is it really for that? I thought it was more for collaborative problem solving. I wasn't aware we were supposed to be maintaining some sort of front for outside viewers. We speculate theories we throw ideas against each other if it doesn't fit we move on, we show our working. This kind of limited information problem may not be solvable but it exercises the mind and the ability to solve problems, the Omaha RADAR video thread gave us this resource for ship locations we get to try that resource out again.

"Desperate" are you for real? This is a fun hobby..

I already messaged her on Instagram asking if she remembers the date.
 
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