Laura and I made a special trip down to the The Neck on Saturday June 9th to check on our second vintage of oyster seed. We had some bad weather come through that we were afraid had stirred up the cages and we wanted to ensure all was still in good working order. We headed down and spent a long, hot day cleaning up the mess. The high winds had flipped the cages around quite a bit given the choppy wave action. We had more work to do than we had expected. Good thing it was an extremely still day with nearly no waves or winds, so we could get everything put back into place.
In the mid afternoon we were just in the process of finishing up. Both Laura and I were standing on the dock assembling a few final cages. It was then that we experienced something we are still trying to fully explain. Out of nowhere we heard what sounded like an enormous, low frequency explosion. Laura and I both immediately stopped what we were doing and looked at each other in a mixture of confusion and concern. I remember Laura’s eyes looking like saucers as she said: “What the heck was that!” It sounded like an enormous bomb had gone off. My mind began to race wondering if an accident had occurred to the north of us, but how would we have heard it all the way down here on the water so far from civilization? Nearly a split second later, we saw huge rings of shockwaves on the water in gigantic semicircle patterns. The water looked like it was being made to dance with high frequency vibrations. Then at nearly the same precise moment huge schools of small fish began leaping out of the water simultaneously as in a synchronized dance routine. The fish jumped out of the water by nearly a foot and a half! I had seen nothing like this before. I looked back at Laura dumbfounded wondering what was going on. We were both scared, thinking something terrible might have happened closer to Richmond or DC. Were we delusional? Were we too hot and both imagining what we had just seen and heard? It was all too real for us to have imagined. After calming down, we both questioned whether to tell anyone what we had seen in fear that folks would think we were nuts.
When we returned home that night, I raced to the computer and checked to see if there was any news of an accidental industrial explosion or any type of terrorist activity. There was no mention of anything. Then I checked for seismic activity. I learned that a small earthquake had been detected the day prior just west of Richmond, but nothing on June 9th. Only upon closer investigation did I learn however, that no seismic monitors were located to the East of Richmond. So even if we had experienced a small earthquake, chances were it would have gone undetected.
I continued searching all the University and news websites and still I found nothing. As a last ditch effort, I did a Google search for “Earthquake York River”. Bingo! I found the following article in the Daily Press which describes an incident in the summer of 1995 where boaters off York River State Park (just off Anderson’s Neck) experienced nearly the same type of event. The witnesses described hearing a very large subterranean explosion, vibrating water, followed by fish leaping out of the water. It sounded nearly identical to what Laura and I had witnessed seventeen years later. OK, so maybe we weren’t nuts after all.
Regardless, I remained somewhat reluctant to mention the event to others given how strange it was. I certainly had not experienced anything like it before. We did feel vindicated that the article described a similar event in nearly the identical location that had occurred in the not so distant past.
Nonetheless, we remain a bit perplexed by our mystery day on the York River. Had we been watching TV on the couch that night with the volume cranked, we probably wouldn’t have even noticed a thing. However, it made us realize that there is more going on in the natural environment than what you perceive while being anesthetized by the sights and sounds of city life. You just have to get up off the couch and into the wilderness to experience it, however!
