A few years ago I gave my Speech 101 class an informational talk on the presence of bioluminesence in the deep sea. The pictures alone generated enough interest for the teacher to let me stand up there the rest of the class period - and this footage from the
Monterey Bay Aquarium should explain why!
If anyone's interested (and you should be!), please leave a comment and I'll take the time to make a fully-illustrated expansion of the speech I gave.
Thanks to
Zooillogix for the post, who in turn are begrudging a thanks to
Deep Sea News - both favorite blogs of mine.
I'm interested in the connections between deep-sea bioluminesence and surface bioluminesence. Why is it on the surface? Has it been pulled upward, and then follows the current toward the coast? I used to sometimes see it while surfing in the evenings, but I never knew the whole story.
ReplyDeleteMmm, it's actually found all over nature, not just in the deep sea. I think it tends to be associated with that simply because such a large percentage of the aliens down there utilize the characteristic.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious land-use creature is fireflies, but bioluminescence is also displayed by many other insects (larva, glowworms!), and even some types of fungi.
Basically, I don't know the answer to your question, but I would guess that it's either a big group of babies, or some shallow-sea creatures riding the currents.