Bioluminescence | Hacker News Reader

Bioluminescence

en.wikipedia.org

13 pointscsomar8 comments

Note: Don't believe that what a photograph shows is what you will experience in real life.

I visited Bahía Bioluminiscente[0] on an island off of Puerto Rico and you could definitely tell something strange was going on, but it was not at all comparable to photographs of the same thing. I would say it is more akin to the glint of a half moon off the water where you disturbed it more than a kind of bluegreen LED in the water.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Mosquito

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Surfing_on_bioluminescent...

Do you reckon polarized glasses would have helped? Even if they're color graded or something, those photos are probably using polarized lenses.

There's no such thing as polarized lenses, only polarization filters. Also, Light from bioluminescence isn't polarized.

I assume the pictures taken for Wikipedia just had very long exposure times.

No - I think the photos just look like that because they use a long exposure time or high sensor sensitivity (high ISO)

I think it depends on the tides / blooms. We visited that same spot on a moonless night, and swam in it - there were sparkles in the water when you disturbed it, and a diffuse green glow all around.

I've also been on the beach at Point Reyes where you could see the waves glowing and the sand sparkling with our footsteps. (That particular red tide gave me a bit of a rash on my legs, unfortunately.)

I agree that a camera can really exaggerate this kind of phenomena, and also the aurora, but, if the conditions are right, these things ARE indeed spectacular to witness with your bare eyes.

I once caught a boat from Lombok to Gili Trawangan at night. As the boat was driving, BL jellies were getting thrown up in the wake which looked like brief blue sparks.

I've often wondered why bioluminescence didn't emerge in higher life forms.

fireflies pulse in unision. There are few contexts where being a glowstick in the dark is net beneficial for a single entity. Communication at a distance is a higher order drive which follows on from significant social constructs, you'd have to posit an outcome for isolated groups where lightspeed and distance played in favour. boundary marking is scent, it persists far longer than an organisms presence on-site. light has immediacy. you'd have to have sheddable bioluminescence to use it for the same function as scent marking a tree.

All things have energy cost, and go to net energy and gene benefit: whats your story for a bioluminescent higher organism with intelligence, which voice or smell doesn't solve better?

Insects with bioluminescence are on heat, hunting a mate in the crowd. or fishing for lower life forms, in a dark sea or cave.

Higher intelligence burdens are not really the same.

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