![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Aug. 19th, 2014 at 10:09 PM
Bioluminescence ("bio" = life, "lumin" = light) is used for communication by a number of sea creatures.
Here, thousands of dinoflagellate or "sea sparkle" can fit into a single drop of ocean water, glowing blue as a signal to ward off predators.
[reddit]
(From ASAP Science FB page)
Comments
Do you remember the luminescence in the sea off Malaya, then, or did your parents move when you were still too little?
I now recall an incident with a fake luminescence created by Robert Wood...have you heard of that little joke of his?
(in the film they used a special light-sensitive camera, so that the slightest movement caused a firework display in the sea; but I am told that the display can be very striking even when it is not artificially enhanced.)
And that is interesting re: special camera; thanks for the info.
Regarding Robert Wood--he worked with fluorescence, and I recall an incident from his biography, in which there was a somewhat fluorescent river, but then he emptied a bottle of green fluorescent dye at the river's source...astonished all the tourists ;)
This was the gentleman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Wood
He had rather a mischievous streak in him, see his illustration of "the Clover and the Plover" and the related story in the link above.