NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Glowing Sea Surface
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2003 Nov 10, 10:27 -0500
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2003 Nov 10, 10:27 -0500
Thanks for sharing these stories guys. I know they don't have anything to do with navigation, but they do have something to do with the sea, which is a main reason I read this list. And they are a bit magical, at least to me. Fred Hebard On Nov 10, 2003, at 5:14 AM, George Huxtable wrote: > Trevor Kenchington, in an interesting posting, said- > >> At sea in bad weather, at night, I have often noticed that the surface >> of the water seems surprisingly bright. I have put that down to >> streaks >> of foam catching the light from my ship's masthead lights and >> reflecting >> it back. > > and added more detail about his observations on the night of a > hurricane. > > My own observations may not relate closely to what Trevor saw, being > in a > different part of the world, at a different season, and under very > different conditions. Nevertheless, here goes. > > ============== > > I got a fright, one black but pleasant summer night, out in the middle > of > the English Channel. No wind, so I had lit up my little diesel. > Opening up > the engine hatch, to give the stern-tube its regular gob of grease, I > saw a > brilliant blue flash that lit up the engine compartment: then another > and > another. This looked just like a big electrical problem, until I > tracked it > down to the transparent plastic pipe which connects the cooling-water > inlet > seacock to the pump on the engine. I then attributed the flashes to > some > form of marine life that was protesting against the indignity of being > sucked through that pipe by giving off a flash of blue light. What it > thought about its subsequent treatment, whirled around the rubber > vanes of > the pump, passed around the engine jacket, mixed with hot exhaust gas > and > spat out at the stern, I can only imagine. > > The blue display got more intense, showing up next as a bright blue > glow > from around the slipstream of the propellor, displaying the flow > pattern > just like a diagram in a hydrodynamics text book, only far more > beautifully. I took it that the same organisms were responding to the > pressure-disturbance from the propellor blades. Also, the puny bow-wave > that my boat raises under engine was painted a glowing blue, and I > could > see, on the water surface well away from the boat, wide arcs of a faint > blue light. > > Altogether, it was a magical night, one that my wife and I will always > remember. We have seen similar effects since that night, but never > anywhere > near so intense. I expect that it's a phenomenon well-known to marine > biology. > > In that instance, I'm sure that it related to individual glowing > organisms, > not to a general glow from the sea surface (although that's what it > might > have looked like from a distance). > > That's it (for what it's worth). I know it doesn't answer Trevor's > questions. > > George. > > ================================================================ > contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by > phone at > 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy > Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. > ================================================================ >