Posted on 02/07/2018 5:00:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
The Pacific Ocean near Big Sur has been illuminated for a few nights with a neon blue glow, bringing photographers out at night to document the bioluminescent phytoplankton bloom.
Steve Haddock, a senior scientist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, says the glow is caused by single-cell organisms called dinoflagellates that drift around the ocean.
“They grow into large numbers by their cells dividing,” says Haddock. “When a predator, like a shrimp, swims by to eat them, the dinoflagellates glow to shock the predator—like turning on a flashlight on a burglar. It also warns other organisms of the predator’s presence.”
The dinoflagellates are always there and always glowing, but they can’t often be seen unless conditions are right. That means calm weather and a calm sea, when nutrients are near the surface.
“We’ll usually see it in the fall or late summer, but we’re having late-summer type weather right now, so we’re seeing them," Haddock says.
I do too.
No it’s on the south side of Puerto Rico. Ear la parquera as I recall.
I swan in a bioluminescent bay in Vieques.
It was really cool.
I found a youtube in the one in Vieques. The one we were in was just as bright and calm, lots of fish and bug activity so a real light show. But that was 1980. Had herd a decade or so after that, that is was in a decline. Glad you were able to experience it.
Recently that bay was in the news because of some type of invasive organism in the water, most likely due to untreated sewage.
Although when I was there I hardly got any poop in my mouth at all.
Yikes! We never swam in PR. The water looked dirty everywhere. Then we took a puddle jumper to St. Croix where my cousin was living. He set us up with a day trip on a catamaran to Buck island for a day of snorkeling. Wow that was amazing.
The PR dive guides actively raped the seafloor of anything saleable while our friends were diving. Shells, conchs, you name it.
It was the opposite of “leave no trace”.
It was as if there was no law there.
That’s too bad but not a surprise. The best snorkeling we ever experienced was at Yalkul lagoon south of Cancun. there was literally nothing there as far as conveniences and no other people. It is somehow closed off enough so that no big predator fish can get in. Like a big aquarium, never saw so many varieties of fish and coral.
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