Bioluminescent (Light-Producing) Organisms

[Mighty_Emperor]

Posted on Tue, Mar. 08, 2005

MARINE BIOLOGY

Deep in the gulf, a weird squid lurks

A Central Florida marine scientist is on the cutting edge of undersea discoveries. Her biggest find: a new kind of squid.

BY PHIL LONG

[email protected]

FORT PIERCE - Deep-sea research scientist Edith Widder has been to sushi restaurants many times.

But she's never had a visitor like this one at her table: A never-before-seen, six-foot squid showed up for lunch 2,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico.

Widder's camera spotted the squid on the first day of a research dive off Louisiana last summer. On the squid's menu were fish heads, fish guts and an epoxy, electronic flashing jellyfish.

''They say I screamed when I saw it on the screen after they brought the camera up to the boat,'' Widder said.

GONE IN A WINK

The squid was in view for seven seconds, said Widder, a world-renowned expert in marine bioluminescence, the light produced by chemicals in marine animals. She captures images of those creatures using a low-light camera system taken to the sea floor by a submarine and left there.

When the camera light comes on, ''the squid looks like it is attacking about where the electronic jellyfish should have been,'' Widder said. ``It jets away with its arms streaming out behind it. It is very unusual in that it doesn't have the long tentacles that a squid normally has.''

Squids usually have eight arms and two long tentacles.

''It has two tentacles, but they are thick and stubby, and that is very odd,'' she said.

No one knows exactly how to classify the squid.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is sending Widder and her ''Eye in the Sea'' back to the Gulf for more pictures, and the National Science Foundation has given her $500,000 to set up a more permanent observatory on the floor of the Pacific Ocean off California.

After examining the video of the creature, Michael Vecchione, NOAA squid and octopus biologist at the National Museum of National History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., said he could not confidently identify it, even at the family level.

VAST UNKNOWN

''We have explored less than 5 percent of our oceans, and there are these phenomenal things out there to be discovered yet,'' Widder told The Herald.

Researchers do know that the ocean can help medicine.

''Green fluorescent protein,'' discovered in jellyfish by another scientist, has had a huge effect on research of cancerous tumors, Widder said. The substance, now created synthetically, allows researchers to see much more clearly the effect of cancer drugs on tumors.

Widder's latest work is based on what she calls ``unobtrusive observation.''

The video camera sits in a seven-foot-tall, 200-pound aluminum tripod-like platform. The camera uses a 12mm or 25mm wide-angle lens. The camera has two strong image intensifiers that make it possible to capture objects in very low light. Because creatures at that depth are not sensitive to red light, that's what she uses to illuminate the scene.

Because of battery life, the observation platform can be down at the ocean floor for only 24 hours at a time.

''Her work on bioluminescence is just strictly cutting edge,'' Vecchione said.

Bioluminescence is Widder's passion.

NATURAL LIGHTING

Thousands of creatures, such as shrimp, squid and jellyfish, have unique flash patterns of bioluminescent light.

''Some use it for finding food,'' Widder said. Some use it for finding mates.

Some animals might have a ''built-in flashlight'' under the eye, or a lure like an angler fish uses to attract prey. Some attract a mate with a particular flashing pattern, like fireflies do, Widder said.

Others use light ''like a burglar alarm, like a scream for help.'' When that happens, predators often drop prey rather than risk becoming prey themselves.

Others produce bioluminescence that matches the color and intensity of the sunlight penetrating through seawater, Widder said.

''It is the perfect cloaking device,'' keeping predators below from seeing the animal, she said. ``It is absolutely amazing to see.''

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[Rubyait]

Giant squid lights up for attack

Enormous deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey, research shows.

Taningia danae's spectacular light show was revealed in video footage taken in deep waters off Chichijima Island in the North Pacific.

Japanese scientists believe the creatures use the bright flashes to disorientate potential victims.

Writing in a Royal Society journal, they say the squid are far from the sluggish, inactive beasts once thought.

In fact, the footage, taken in 2005 - the first time T. danae had been captured on camera in their natural environment - reveals them to be aggressive predators.

The squid, which can measure over 2m (7ft) in length, deftly swim backwards and forwards by flapping their large, muscular fins. They are able to alter their direction rapidly by bending their flexible bodies.

The films, taken at depths of 240m to 940m (790 to 3,080ft), also show the cephalopods reaching speeds of up to 2.5m (8ft) per second as they attack the bait, capturing it with their eight tentacles.

Blinding flashes

However, the intense pulses of light that accompanied the ferocious attacks surprised the research team.

Dr Tsunemi Kubodera from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, who led the research, told the BBC News website: "No-one had ever seen such bioluminescence behaviour during hunting of deep-sea large squid."

The footage reveals the creatures emitting short flashes from light-producing organs, called photophores, on their arms.

Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team said: "[The bioluminescence] might act as a blinding flash for prey."

The light would disorientate the squid's intended prey, disrupting their defences, they added.

It could also act, the scientists commented, "as a means of illumination and measuring target distance in an otherwise dark environment."

However, further investigation revealed the light bursts may also serve another, quite different, purpose away from the hunting field - courtship.

As the squid drifted around torches that had been attached to the bait rig, they emanated long and short pulses of light.

The team believe the torch lights may have resembled another glowing T. danae, and the squid were possibly emitting light as courtship behaviour.

Deep-sea squid - once thought to be legendary monsters of the sea - are notoriously difficult to study, and little is known about their ecology and biology. Several species prowl the ocean depths.

T. danae is thought to be abundant in the tropical and subtropical oceans of the world. The largest reported measured 2.3m (7.5ft) in length and weighed nearly 61.4kg (134.5lbs).

Larger species of giant squid belong to the Architeuthidae family: females are thought to measure up to 13m (43ft) in length.

But the aptly named colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) is thought to be the largest of all - possibly reaching up to 14m (46ft) long.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6357005.stm

 

[ramonmercado]

I hate to bring this up ...

Vomiting Shrimp and Other Deep-Sea Creatures Light Up the Ocean Floor

by Carrie Arnold on 7 September 2012, 3:43 PM | 0 Comments

Credit: Sonke Johnsen
Two anemones on a hermit crab bioluminesce.

Credit: Sonke Johnsen
Don Liberatore pilots the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible in the northern Bahamas.

Credit: Sonke Johnsen
The spoonarm octopus Bathypolypus arcticus is generally found below 200 meters in the North Atlantic.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
The Venus flytrap anemone Actinoscyphia secretes bioluminescent mucus.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
Ophiochiton ternispinus is a bioluminescent echinoderm closely related to starfish.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
The colony-forming cnidarian Gerardia was frequently identified outside the submersible.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
The deep-sea shrimp Parapandalus vomits bioluminescence into the surrounding water.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
Two anemones on a hermit crab bioluminesce.


Credit: Sonke Johnsen
Don Liberatore pilots the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible in the northern Bahamas.

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More than a kilometer below the ocean's surface, where the sunless water is inky black, scientists have documented one of nature's most spectacular living light shows. An underwater survey has found that roughly 20% of bottom-dwelling organisms in the Bahamas produce light. Moreover, all of the organisms surveyed by the researchers proved to have visual senses tuned to the wavelengths of light generated by this bioluminescence. The work speaks to the important role self-generated light plays in deep-sea communities, marine biologists say.

Bioluminescence has evolved many times in marine species and may help organisms find mates and food or avoid predators. In the middle depths of the ocean—the mesopelagic zone that is located 200 to 1000 meters below the surface—the vast majority of organisms can bioluminesce. Much less was known about bioluminescence in organisms living close to the sea floor. Such benthic organisms are harder to visit or sample and therefore study, says Sönke Johnsen, a marine biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

With Tamara Frank, a marine biologist at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, and colleagues, Johnsen recently explored four sites in the northern Bahamas in a submersible. The researchers collected the benthic organisms by suctioning them gently into a lightproof box with a vacuum hose. Once back in their shipboard labs, they stimulated bioluminescence in the captured organisms by softly prodding the animals. Those that glowed were tested further to determine the exact wavelength of light emitted.

As the survey team reported online on 5 September in The Journal of Experimental Biology, about 20% of the species they gathered were capable of producing bioluminescence when touched, including several species of coral, sea anemones, and an unusual species of shrimp that vomited bioluminescent chemicals into the water surrounding it. Most of the organisms glowed blue, except for a family of corals known as pennatulaceans, which produced green light.

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Although fewer benthic species produce light than in the middle depths of the ocean, where approximately three-quarters of the organisms glow when touched, the sea floor was much brighter than upper depths. "It was like glowing rain," Johnsen says. "We saw big flashes, then little ones, then streaks of larger gelatinous animals being squished against the windshield."

This paradox—that fewer benthic organisms bioluminesce, but they do so more frequently—may be explained by how the phenomenon is triggered. A sea-dwelling species doesn't produce light constantly; it typically does so only when touched by another object. Mesopelagic organisms float freely in the ocean and infrequently encounter other plants and animals. Benthic species, on the other hand, are constantly bumping up against corals or being jostled by microscopic plankton.

In a second study, Frank and Johnsen determined the wavelengths of light to which the captured organisms are most sensitive by placing a tiny electrode on the animal's cornea or light-capturing organ. When they recorded a tiny jolt of electricity, it meant that the light had been detected by the animal. Most of the benthic organisms were most sensitive to blue-green light between 470 to 497 nanometers, Frank and her colleagues reported in a second article in that same issue of the journal.

Frank also discovered that two species of crab (Eumunida picta and Gastroptychus spinifer), were also sensitive to UV light, a surprising find because there is no UV light that deep in the ocean. Johnsen thinks this additional sensitivity may help the crabs avoid toxic corals, which produce a greenish glow, and home in on the edible organisms that emit blue light. Frank and Johnsen say they will conduct behavioral experiments to see whether their hypothesis about the color-coded benthic buffet is correct.

"It's a splendid piece of work," says Peter Herring, a retired bioluminescence expert at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, in the United Kingdom. "It's a good collection of data from benthic animals at this location, and it uses the best technology as far as imaging is concerned."

news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... tml?ref=hp
Link is dead. No archived version found.

 

[rynner2]

...The spray was glowing in the dark! We enjoyed that show for awhile and then it faded away. We figured the Gulf Stream had carried some plankton up from warmer waters nearer the equator. You see some odd things at sea. Not always Fortean, but pretty amazing.

According to Wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescent ):

"Bioluminescence occurs widely among some groups of animals, especially in the open sea; in some fungi and bacteria; and in various terrestrial invertebrates including insects. Many, perhaps most deep-sea animals produce light. Most marine light-emission is in the blue and green light spectrum, the wavelengths that pass furthest through seawater."

 

[ramonmercado]

Vid at link.

Wildlife photographer Jeff Cremer has discovered what appears to be a new type of bioluminescent larvae. He told members of the press recently that he was walking near a camp in the Peruvian rainforest at night a few years ago, when he came upon a side of exposed earth upon which there were many little green glowing dots. Taking a closer look, he found that each dot was in fact the glowing head of a worm of some sort. He posted pictures of what he'd found on Reddit which were eventually spotted by entomologist Aaron Pomerantz, with the Tambopata Research Center. After contacting Cremer, Pomerantz made a pilgrimage to see the worms, gathered some samples and set to work studying them. Shortly thereafter, he determined that the worms were the larvae of an unknown type of beetle, likely a type of click beetle.

Further study of the half inch long larvae revealed that the photoluminescence served just a single purpose, attracting prey. They would sit waiting with their jaws spread wide open. When the light they were emitting attracted something, typically ants or termites, the jaws would snap shut capturing the bug thus providing a meal. Pomerantz collected several samples of the larvae and took them back to a lab where they were tested—he and his colleagues found the larvae would snap shut on just about any bug that touched its jaws. He compared them to the giant worms in the 90's sci-fi comedy, Tremors—only these were much smaller of course.

In the wild the larvae live in the ground—they push just their heads out, keeping their bodies hidden, revealing just their glowing heads—bugs, like moths to a light on the porch in summer, are attracted to the light and get eaten. ...

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-mysterious ... orest.html

 

[rynner2]

How about Fireflies?

All fireflies glow as larvae. Bioluminescence serves a different function in lampyrid larvae than it does in adults. It appears to be a warning signal to predators, since many fireflies larvae contain chemicals that are distasteful or toxic.

Light in adult beetles was originally thought to be used for similar warning purposes, but now its primary purpose is thought to be used in mate selection. Fireflies are a classic example of an organism that uses bioluminescence for sexual selection. They have a variety of ways to communicate with mates in courtships: steady glows, flashing, and the use of chemical signals unrelated to photic systems. The signal provides potential mates with information about the species of the signaller or its quality as a mate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly

 

[maximus otter]

Earlier this year a new species of deep water shark, Etmopterus lailae, was discovered in waters surrounding the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Measurements of external features, teeth, vertebrae and intestines, along with specific external markings and patterns confirmed that it was indeed a new species – a member of the lanternshark family. Lanternsharks (Etmopteridae) are one of the most species-rich shark genera, with approximately 38 known species, 11 of which have been described since 2002.

The lanternsharks are one of two deep sea shark families to possess the ability to bioluminesce – in other words, they are able to glow in the dark. The other shark family with the ability to do this are the kitefin sharks (Dalatiidae).

Bioluminescence is the emission of light as a result of a biochemical reaction. In contrast to fluorescence and phosphorescence, bioluminescent reactions do not require the initial absorption of sunlight or other electromagnetic radiation by a molecule or pigment to emit light.

It is a phenomenon that has been documented in over 700 genera of animals, with the vast majority living in the ocean. In fact, there are a known 29 independent evolutionary events of bioluminescence in marine fish lineages alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...sharks-discovered-in-hawaii-etmopterus-lailae

maximus otter

 

[Comfortably Numb]

'Catsharks Can Glow in the Dark'...

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Bioluminescence...

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Giant Squid And Glow-In-The-Dark Sharks Captured By Researchers Off New Zealand

Source: IFLSCIENCE!
Date: 18 February, 2020

If you’re going to find strange creatures of the deep it’ll be off the coast of New Zealand, where legendary giants have long roamed.

So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that researchers exploring New Zealand’s deep waters on the hunt for elusive glow-in-the-dark sharks and hoki managed to catch an unexpected hitchhiker: a 4-meter (13-foot) giant squid.

Researchers aboard the New Zealand-based National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) research vessel Tangaroa were on an expedition to survey hoki, New Zealand’s most valuable commercial fish, in the Chatham Rise – an area of ocean floor to the east of New Zealand that makes up part of the "lost continent" of Zealandia.

[...]

Though giant squids are very rare, they can be found around the world, from Japan to the Gulf of Mexico, but they most often seem to crop up around New Zealand waters.

“New Zealand is kind of the giant squid capital of the world – anywhere else a giant squid is caught in a net would be a massive deal. But there’s been a few caught off New Zealand," Stevens said in a statement.

“It’s only the second one I’ve ever seen. I’ve been on about 40 trips on Tangaroa, and most surveys are about a month, and I’ve only ever seen two. That’s pretty rare.”

[...]

While the squid was fortuitous, Dr Jérôme Mallefet of UCLouvain, Belgium – the world's leading expert on bioluminescent sharks – was determined to capture and photograph glow-in-the-dark sharks. He even set up a darkroom aboard the RV Tangaroa in anticipation, and was rewarded handsomely with the first evidence of bioluminescent sharks in New Zealand waters.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-a...arks-captured-by-researchers-off-new-zealand/

 

[maximus otter]

24.4.20: A group of glowing dolphins was captured on video lighting up the waters of Newport Beach.

Patrick Coyne captured the footage of the pod of dolphins in the bioluminescent waves and the video was also uploaded by Newport Coastal Adventure to its Facebook page. The company said its captain took Coyne out to look for dolphins Wednesday and encountered the amazing interaction with the glowing dolphins just after sunset.

The neon blue appearance of the water is usually caused by algae in the water.

Bioluminescent phytoplankton give the surf an electric blue glow.

https://abc7ny.com/dolphins-glowing-bioluminescent-waves-newport-beach-bioluminescence/6126327/

maximus otter

 

[Min Bannister]

OM actual G that is incredible. I can't like that enough. Everyone watch it now!!!

 

[Nosmo King]

Glow-in-the-dark sharks found off New Zealand coast

Scientists say they have found that three deepwater shark species living off New Zealand glow in the dark.

The species were collected from the Chatham Rise - an area of ocean floor to the east of New Zealand - in January of last year, according to the study.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56256808

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Bioluminescence: Photographer's five-year wait to capture blue sea glow

BBC Wales News
26 June, 2021

A Welsh photographer has said he was left "euphoric" after five years waiting to capture pictures of waves glowing with bioluminescence.

Bioluminescence is the light that some living creatures, such as plankton, emit from their cells.

Gareth Mon Jones, from Llangefni on Anglesey, was one of several photographers to snap the dazzling display at Penmon Point beach on 19 June.

(...)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-57610212

 

[Xanatic*]

In the russian Arctic, glowing spots in the snow was discovered. Turns out the culprit was marine organisms, which had somehow got mixed up in the snow.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...make-snow-glow-russian-arctic-bioluminescence

 

[gordonrutter]

From Atlas Obscura
"THE “SEA OF STARS” IS a beautiful phenomenon that occurs during late summer in the reefs of the Maldives, caused by bioluminescent phytoplankton called Lingulodinium polyedrum. The water here is filled with this plankton, and the movement of the waves causes it to glow, creating an incredible shimmering effect that looks like the sea is full of stars."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sea-of-stars?