NUFORC Sighting 177704

Occurred: 2023-08-11 21:56 Local
Reported: 2023-08-19 11:55 Pacific
Duration: Roughly 4-5 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: At sea, CA, International Waters
Location details: Roughly 100 nautical miles south of Mexico border in Pacific Ocean

Shape: Unknown
Characteristics: Lights on object

Two lights that went from dim to absolutely bright then disappeared .

On Aug. 11th, 2023, at approximately 9:55pm, my wife, daughter and myself were settling in for the night on our last night of our Carnival Panorama cruise. I stepped out on to our stateroom balcony to enjoy the last night's fresh air on the ocean before coming back in to Long Beach, CA to end our 7 day cruise to Mexico. I had been on the balcony for only about 2 minutes when I saw the first light. We were traveling north and were a few miles off the coast in deep water (approx. 12,000 ft according to the cruise TV channel). Our stateroom was on the land side of the Carnival Panorama ship. The light showed up about 3 fingers width above line of sight as we were stationed on the 6th deck of the ship. So the light was far above the horizon. It seemed too far away to see a definitive shape. Just lights is all we saw. The first light I saw started out dim, almost not visible to the naked eye. Then it got much brighter and bigger like it was coming towards us. Then, all of a sudden, that super bright light just disappeared faster than it came. But then, a few seconds later, the light showed up again acting as it did the first time I saw it. I was trying to debunk these lights as planes or possible ships. But the movement of these lights didn't fit with how planes act. I, at first, thought well we are a few miles off the coast, maybe it's a plane going in for a landing in Mexico, as we were still south of the border on Baja California Spur. I figured maybe the plane went in to a bank of clouds for a few seconds and reappeared. However, these lights were changing location each time from west and east and back again. Once, the lights showed up further west of original sighting then, much farther east of original sighting. Now, during the second sighting, another light appeared behind the first and acted the same way. Came in to being out of nowhere and got astonishingly bright with the other, then just disappeared. During the second sighting, I turned and opened the door to our stateroom from the balcony and told my wife that I may be seeing UFO's and asked her to come look. There was nothing for what seemed an eternity so I started feeling really dumb. But then, the lights showed up again, further to the east and my wife saw them this time. We watched as these lights went from dim to super bright and just disappear. This happened 3 more times after my wife had come out but one of the lights disappeared and only one was visible during the last 3 times. And each time, was in a different place in the sky and not as bright as the first 2 times. My daughter finally came out to see what was going on but they were gone by the time she showed up. This all happened in about a 4‐5 minute time frame. I tried to get pics and video but with light distortion from the ship, I can't see it on the video. I kept thinking that maybe it was planes but there were no clouds that could've blocked the lights and also they moved multiple directions in a very short time frame to be planes. I'm hoping others on the cruise with us saw them too.

Posted 2023-09-10