Attenbobough's Life That Glows Page #2

---

"And after 15 minutes of steaming, the ship was completely surrounded

"by a sea of milky white colour with a fairly uniform luminescence.

"And it appeared as though the ship was sailing over

"a field of snow or gliding over the clouds."

Reports like this are rarer than the supposed sightings

of the Loch Ness Monster.

And there was no photographic evidence.

Some scientists, including marine biologist Steven Haddock,

were curious, and sought confirmation from above.

We wondered if you could find one of these ship reports where

they record sailing through one of these milky seas,

and actually find the corresponding satellite data that cover

that area at that same time.

So we looked at the satellite from the ship report in 1995

and it was somewhat of a eureka moment.

We cleaned up the noisy sensor image from the camera,

we mapped it onto the ship track, and this 300km feature

emerged on the map matching exactly with what the ship had reported.

So it was really an amazing moment.

We were able to document the full extent of the milky sea over

three successive nights as it rotated with the currents.

So satellite images from the space age validated

a piece of maritime folklore.

On rare occasions, the oceans do glow.

But what was causing a glow

so bright that it could be seen from space?

The answer can be found at the back of a neglected fridge.

Left for a couple of days, this sea bream starts to glow.

The fish itself has no light-producing ability.

The glow is, in fact, produced by bacteria that are found

in almost all seawater when they start to feed on decaying fish.

On rare occasions when currents and temperatures cause a large bloom of

algae in the ocean, these very same bacteria also feed on dying algae.

Once they reach a critical concentration,

their secretions trigger others to glow.

They were glowing in such numbers that they can be

detected by a satellite in orbit.

Bacteria are among the most ancient forms of life,

so they may have been the very first living things to glow.

But why they did so is still debated.

Today some animals have stolen the genes of the bacteria,

and incorporated them into their own DNA.

Others have simply kidnapped the bacteria themselves.

These lights are made by captives,

which are farmed in special organs below the eyes of flashlight fish.

They have harnessed the bacterial glow for many purposes.

We can only see them because our special cameras use infrared light.

But to a predator, the fish look like this.

A confusion of lights which makes it hard to pick a single target.

Just before they change direction, the fish give a quick blink.

These lights have other functions, too.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes