NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Glowing Sea Surface
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Nov 12, 09:21 -0400
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Nov 12, 09:21 -0400
Fred, Marine life, of some species, thrives at temperatures down to the freezing point of seawater. Temperature is therefore immaterial to the issue at hand. In any case, the Harbour is still fairly warm at the moment -- as I can confirm from personal exposure. However, algae (assuming that the thing in question was an alga) need sunlight. The species living in each area are adapted to use the seasonal cycles of sunlight available in that area (along with seasonal cycles in many other things), while light is abundant here in high summer but getting scarce by the autumnal equinox. So, for the third time: In my judgement (as a professional marine scientist), I find it a bit improbable that anything would be blooming here in late September in sufficient abundance to produce the appearance of continuous light (rather than individual sparks) that I saw. Not impossible but a bit improbable. I did not turn to this list for an education in marine biology. (Got that at university, starting nearly 30 years ago.) I did think that someone might be able to tell me whether there were possible physico-chemical explanations for what I saw. Jared has said that, at least where the water itself is concerned, there are not. If I get the chance, I'll ask the phytoplankton types at my wife's research institute whether they can suggest a species which might have produced the light. Trevor Kenchington Fred Hebard wrote: > Trevor, > > I believe marine fauna are fairly common near sea ice. This implies > that flora are there also, at the base of the food chain. Which I > always hear about the nutrient-rich arctic waters, where the nutrients > in questions are minerals for the flora. So algae probably are > abundant in your harbor until it ices over. I have no idea what ice > would do to the light intensity in the water underneath, but it might > knock it down enough to crash algal populations. Now what it was that > was doing bioluminescence, I do not know. -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus@iStar.ca Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250 R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251 Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555 Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus