NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Follow-up on bioluminescence
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Mar 23, 04:04 -0400
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Mar 23, 04:04 -0400
Peter -
Yes, this occurred to me. Without actually being on a canoe between islands in the Pacific, I can only try to piece this together from suggestions and from experts.
One thought occurred to me - I know that some small slow moving craft sometimes have fish following them - perhaps the existence of fish in the vicinity of the voyaging canoes create a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. It's all speculation on my part, but it's an interesting little tidbit.
John H.
On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Peter Fogg <piterr11@gmail.com> wrote:
The open ocean, far from land, presents mostly as sterile, with little fish life evident (although as in all else I have little doubt that there would be exceptions to this). Schools of fish, generally speaking, are associated with shallow water, reefs and coastlines.
On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 3:17 AM, Apache Runner <apacherunner@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear All -You may recall that we had some discussion about David Lewis' report of "underwater lightning" in "We the Navigators" some time back.I finally got hold of an expert in bioluminescence and asked him about this - showing him the material from Lewis' book. He said it sounds a lot like the effect one gets from a school of fish rapidly darting - changing direction and inducing a "deep flash" associated with dinoflaggelate bioluminescence. He said that he knows of this phenomenon - not described by Lewis, but in other contexts.So, this makes sense, although I don't know how it indicates the presence of land. I don't know a lot about how fish swim.John H.