“Orbs” over the Great Lakes

Time: November 4th 2025 at 3:35am EST

Location: Northern Lake Michigan – 10 mi SW of Lansing Shoal. (Looking NE)

I work in shipping on the Great Lakes. Starting last winter, around the same time of the NJ drone reports I started to see objects on the Great Lakes that I've been calling orbs for lack of a better way to describe them. I am entirely unsure of what I am seeing but I can confidently say what they are not:

• Balloons
• Airplanes (I always check flight radar)
• Lanterns

My first sighting was on Lake Erie at Southeast shoal, we were traveling westbound Lake Erie and another vessel was approaching Southeast shoal Eastbound when I saw a low orange light appear behind the vessels starboard side and travel behind it to its port side before vanishing. I would later see these orange lights in the same area over Lake Erie (Southeast shoal and further east over the lake)
While traveling halfway down lake Michigan I saw another of these orbs (this one I do have video of, it's not great and I am proud to own my very own grainy low quality sighting video) I have a new phone but I saved the files on my PC and can upload in a separate post later if people really want to see it, it's hard to capture these on phone video.

This post is more of just telling what I've been seeing and curious if anyone else can confirm similar characteristics as I am seeing.

This is all I can describe about these "orbs":
They seem to be active in late fall/winter on the lakes. I sailed all summer since seeing them last year and havent seen them again
until recently. I have been off work the last 2 months so I'm not sure if they came out sooner. They have an orange color that matches what Venus or a planet would look like low in the sky. They fade in and out and often are multiples in the same area together. I have seen them fade, brighten and some of them have even begun to blink like a drone would, some do not do this. They don't seem to travel very far distances while I am able to see them, as if they are hanging around one area and moving in seemingly random directions within this area. They are incredibly difficult to document on a phone, and I often observe them through binoculars in the pilothouse. I've never picked them up on radar like I can aircraft, they are probably too small anyways. These two pictures were taken about 15 seconds apart and show how they appear when they fade in and out.