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'Milky Seas' / Mareel: Vast Glowing Expanses Of Ocean

EnolaGaia

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For centuries mariners have reported seeing the nighttime sea glowing from horizon to horizon. This phenomenon couldn't be ignored or brushed off once such widespread glowing areas were captured on satellite images. Though suspected to be the result of microbial bioluminescence, the exact cause has not yet been proven.

Mystery Ocean Glow Confirmed in Satellite Photos
Mariners have long told of rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows intensely as far as the eye can see in all directions.

Fictionally, such a "milky sea" is encountered by the Nautilus in Jules Verne classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

Scientists don't have a good handle what's going on. But satellite sensors have now provided the first pictures of a milky sea and given new hope to learning more about the elusive events.

The newly released images show a vast region of the Indian Ocean, about the size of Connecticut, glowing three nights in a row. The luminescence was also spotted from a ship in the area. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/9387-mystery-ocean-glow-confirmed-satellite-photos.html

SEE ALSO:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_seas_effect
 
For centuries mariners have reported seeing the nighttime sea glowing from horizon to horizon. This phenomenon couldn't be ignored or brushed off once such widespread glowing areas were captured on satellite images. Though suspected to be the result of microbial bioluminescence, the exact cause has not yet been proven.

Mystery Ocean Glow Confirmed in Satellite Photos

This reminds me of the strangre glow seen by a pilot over the Pacific a few years ago. I'm sure it was mentioned on this forum.
 
This new Smithsonian Magazine article provides an extensive overview of the phenomenon, its history, recent successes in identifying milky seas using earth-monitoring satellite imagery, and updated information about what's believed to cause it.
What Causes Swaths of the Ocean to Glow a Magnificent Milky Green?

The sky was moonless and overcast, leaving no stars to steer by. Alone at the helm in the middle of the Arabian Sea, somewhere between Oman and India, I could see nothing in the ink-black night save for our ship’s dimly lit compass rolling on its gimbal mount as we heaved and swayed through three-meter seas. But half an hour into my shift, the sails above me began to glow, as if the moon had risen. But there was no moon, nor any stars or other ships. The light, it seemed, was coming from below and growing in intensity. Soon the entire ocean was glow-stick green, but muted, as if the light were shining through a sea of milk.

... During the voyage, I’d grown accustomed to the usual “sea sparkle” caused by dinoflagellates that ignite when the water is agitated, causing ribbons of light to twist off the Mir’s bow. But this was not that. This was the whole of the ocean, as far as I could see, glowing a uniform, opaque green. Despite the compass still wheeling in its mount, the light in the water created an optical illusion, making the sea appear perfectly calm, as if we were gliding through phosphorescent skies rather than roiling seas. ...

I woke the rest of the crew, and for over four hours we remained engulfed in this sea of green light, wonderstruck, with no idea what it was we were witnessing. Finally, a razor-sharp line appeared ahead of us where the lambent sea ended and blackness began. ... It wasn’t until we arrived at port 10 days later that we would learn the name for the eerie phenomenon that had surrounded us: a milky sea. ...

For centuries, sailors have been describing milky seas, rare occurrences where enormous expanses of the ocean light up uniformly at night, at times stretching for tens of thousands of square kilometers, or more. ...

A milky sea even made an appearance in Moby-Dick, where Melville describes a mariner sailing through a “shrouded phantom of the whitened waters” that were as “horrible to him as a real ghost.” ...

Every observation of a milky sea throughout history has been a chance encounter ... , and only once did a vessel with any scientific research capabilities happen upon one, when the USS Wilkes steamed through a milky sea for three consecutive nights off the island of Socotra, Yemen, in 1985. Onboard the Wilkes was the late marine biologist David Lapota, who was working for the navy at the time studying bioluminescence. Lapota and his team of researchers sampled the water and discovered a profusion of the bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio harveyi—a common, well-dispersed species known to luminesce—attached to bits of algae, leading them to hypothesize that legions of this bacterium and potentially other bioluminescent bacterial species as well, are the cause of milky seas. This research, conducted nearly 40 years ago, remains the only time a milky sea was ever studied in the field. ...

Steve Miller, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, has been part of a small group of scientists leading the effort to demystify milky seas for nearly 20 years ...

Miller and his colleagues considered whether it might be possible to observe any type of marine bioluminescence from space. It was assumed that any small-scale bioluminescence, such as sea sparkle, produces far too weak a light signal to be seen from so far away. ... An atmospheric scientist by training, Miller wondered if he could use historical satellite data to locate one of these events. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for ...

Since that initial discovery, a new generation of satellite technology has greatly improved Miller’s hunt for milky seas. Two satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and the Joint Polar Satellite System—were launched in 2011 and 2017, respectively. These modern satellites ... are equipped with specialized day/night band instruments that, at their extreme low end of sensitivity, can pick up something as dim as bioluminescence from space. ... Miller and his team have successfully identified a dozen milky seas via satellite imagery, the most significant of which was a 2019 event off the coast of Java spanning over 100,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Iceland—which glowed continuously for at least 45 nights. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...-to-glow-a-magnificent-milky-green-180980296/

Republished From: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/and-then-the-sea-glowed-a-magnificent-milky-green/
 
We now have the first known photographs of milky seas taken by someone sailing through them.

A researcher who'd identified multiple 2019 milky sea events from satellite images published his results in 2021. He was contacted by a student who'd been a crew member on a yacht that encountered one of these 2019 incidents, who forwarded him photographic images taken on the night of the encounter. The image / segment on the left was taken by a GoPro camera, and the one on the right was taken with a smartphone.

Nijhuis photo_glowing sea stitch.jpg
Eerie Photo Proves the Existence of Milky Seas—A First

For centuries, mariners have told stories of sailing at night in “milky seas”—ephemeral patches of steadily glowing ocean that make the water’s surface appear ghostly green or white, sometimes stretching from horizon to horizon. Scientists have long been intrigued by this unusual type of bioluminescence, which is thought to be produced by bacteria. But they searched in vain for photographic evidence—until now.

Steven Miller, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, has just published a paper that includes the first known photograph of a milky sea. It was taken by crew members on a ketch that sailed near the island of Java in the summer of 2019. ...

Miller’s report of McKinnon’s sighting was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. It includes two shots taken by the crew: one was captured with a smartphone, and the other with a GoPro camera. The images provide a long-sought glimpse of an elusive phenomenon. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eerie-photo-proves-the-existence-of-milky-seas-a-first/
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the published research report. The full report (with photos / illustrations) is accessible at the link below.


Steven A. Miller
Boat encounter with the 2019 Java bioluminescent milky sea: Views from on-deck confirm satellite detection
PNAS, July 11, 2022 119 (29) e2207612119
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.220761211

Abstract
“Milky seas” are massive swaths of uniformly and steadily glowing ocean seen at night. The phenomenon is thought to be caused by luminous bacteria, but details of milky sea composition, structure, cause, and implications in nature remain largely uncertain. Between late July and early September 2019, specialized low-light satellite sensors detected a possible bioluminescent milky sea south of Java, Indonesia, spanning >100,000 km2. Upon learning of these findings, crew members of the yacht Ganesha reached out to confirm and share details of their personal encounter with this same event. Here, we document Ganesha’s experience as recalled by the crew, compare their course to satellite data, and assess their photography of this milky sea.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207612119
 
I thought there was a photo published in Fortean Studies? Maybe I'm mis-remembering.
 
I thought there was a photo published in Fortean Studies? Maybe I'm mis-remembering.

I'm not familiar with whatever image you're remembering or referring to.

There have been photos of isolated small-scale bioluminescent marine phenomena before. The difference is that this seems to be the first authentic photo of milky sea / mareel - a huge expanse of calm sea uniformly glowing as far as the eye can see.
 
I'm not familiar with whatever image you're remembering or referring to.

There have been photos of isolated small-scale bioluminescent marine phenomena before. The difference is that this seems to be the first authentic photo of milky sea / mareel - a huge expanse of calm sea uniformly glowing as far as the eye can see.
I thought it was in The Lightwheel Wonder by Michael Shoemaker in Fortean Studies 2, but it's not... Which means I have no idea where I saw a milky sea photo, but I'm sure I have. I'll check one or two of my other books, while carefully avoiding disappearing down a thunderbird-style rabbit hole.
 
I thought it was in The Lightwheel Wonder by Michael Shoemaker in Fortean Studies 2, but it's not... Which means I have no idea where I saw a milky sea photo, but I'm sure I have. I'll check one or two of my other books, while carefully avoiding disappearing down a thunderbird-style rabbit hole.
One if the William Corliss books has an image of a small area of milkyness.
 
Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature by Corliss only has black and white drawings I'm afraid. Might be in some of the Science Frontiers updates.
 
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