Red Tide off California Coast Creates Blue Glow
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Red tide at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, Calif. North County Times/Zuma Press/Newscom
It’s best seen at night. In the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, masses of algae have bloomed to form what’s known as a red tide.
By and large, it is not considered a good thing. The algae are sometimes toxic. They can poison fish or starve them of oxygen.
But then why are people gathering to look, and why are some biologists impressed by it? Because it’s blue.
Peter Franks, a biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said the particular organism causing it, Lingulodinium polyedrum, was his “favorite dinoflagellate.”
Why so? “Because it’s intensely bioluminescent,” he wrote on the blog Deep-Sea News. “When jostled, each organism will give off a flash of blue light created by a chemical reaction within the cell. When billions and billions of cells are jostled — say, by a breaking wave — you get a seriously spectacular flash of light.”
Luckily for those who like dinoflagellates, we’re close to a new moon. The blue glow is usually pretty faint, best seen when it’s very, very dark (though the chemical reaction happens at all hours). During the day, the algal bloom usually makes the water murky, with pigments that can turn the water reddish-brown.
It also can create quite a stench, though biologists say the waters are safe for swimming. They go so far as to suggest that you scoop up some water in a glass jar, shake it and watch it glow (we’ll have to trust them if we don’t live near the Southern California coast).
“Oooo,” wrote a person on Twitter. “Electric-blue glowing phytoplankton! Put it in a bottle and shake to waken the dinoflagellates. SHINY!”
Photographer Kevin Baird posted an eerie image on Flickr with the caption, “This is SpongeBob’s aurora borealis.”
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How fascinating! I would love to be able to see that in person.
Posted by: ocmarsha | September 30, 2011, 11:45 am 11:45 am
I have to add seeing that for myself to my to-do-list. Looks beautiful.
Posted by: Vee | September 30, 2011, 12:18 pm 12:18 pm
Just go to Puerto Rico. There are two lagoons that you can see it any time of the year.
Posted by: Kaseshini | September 30, 2011, 3:35 pm 3:35 pm
Is anyone else here as hungry as I am?
Posted by: Mike Weaver | September 30, 2011, 9:31 pm 9:31 pm
A very large part of the oceans of the world have photoactive organisms. Run a motorboat at night and watch the light form in your wake. But such an abundance as to create a red tide is just another sign of dead zones turning up in more and more regions of the world, this means death for many sea creatures, and an even slimmer sea food catch for commercial fishermen. Add to some fish being found to have radioactive traces in their body from the Japanese Nuclear plant disasters, well just gotta say we may be in trouble (humanity) in many more ways than we even suspect.
Really very shocking that Japan has not gotten a better grip of those nuclear disasters by now. So much greed in the world, dismay at the slowness of our species learning from the past. Of course there are other species that have gone extinct by overuse of their environment, usually on Islands or other remote areas where they were able to eat all of the food they required to exist on.
Posted by: Jim | September 30, 2011, 11:37 pm 11:37 pm
I saw this last night at long beach. It was amazing!!!!
Posted by: Deitra | October 3, 2011, 8:19 pm 8:19 pm
Saw this with my kids today. It was a truly amazing sight in La Jolla Shores. The kids discovered that if they dragged their feet and fingers through the wet sand, a blue glow followed. We also discovered that about twenty feet away from the ocean where the sand was not as wet, dragging your feet on this sand still produced a blue glow. There were lots of people at the beach today observing this spectacle. Although this was a fun this to view, we heard that this is not a good sign for the ocean. This type of organism takes away oxygen from the sea therefore depriving fish from oxygen and even causing their death.
Posted by: Haydee | October 4, 2011, 2:17 am 2:17 am