NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Polynesian navigation
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 Jun 06, 21:31 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 Jun 06, 21:31 -0600
From:> The description in Lewis sounds an awful lot like big squid. Some > species of squid have bright, active bioluminescent organs which they > can use to make impressive pulsing bands of light which would look > like "underwater lightning" on a dark night. They would have to be awfully close to the surface for anyone to see it above water. Do squid ever hang around the surface? To me it sounds more like chemiluminescent bacteria or protozoans who are actually triggering luminscence in their neighbors in some kind of chain reaction (I have no idea why they might do this, but they still might). At the moment we know of organisms that give off light, and organisms that have light receptors that influence biochemical changes (in bacteria, even, these are far more general than vision systems), but nobody has yet found an organism that transmits signals between cells by light. There are a few people looking, but nothing convincing so far. Ken Muldrew. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---