Sea sparkle

Blue tears can cover a coast.

The visible scene is Noctiluca blooms coloring water by day and producing electric blue flashes along beaches at night.

Beneath it are Noctiluca scintillans, coastal circulation, bloom growth, feeding, nutrient condition.

On the sound around us, we talk a lot about performance, mental, creative, and physical, and lately I have been thinking about what actually fuels that.

We upgrade our tech, and we upgrade our environment, but we do not always upgrade what we put into the body that has to carry all of it.

Different organisms use different light-producing chemistry, and the signal can last less than a second or remain visible across many nights.

Color, timing, response to disturbance, location, and scale are therefore evidence.

A useful way to picture this section is watching Noctiluca blooms coloring water by day and producing electric blue flashes along beaches at night while the invisible biology beneath it becomes measurable.

All these minute shells perform a marvelous work in building up the crust of the earth, forming the bottom of deep seas and the platforms of coral reefs.

the chalk cliffs of england are composed of shells of unestimated millions which were once dropped upon the bottom of a deep sea and piled upward until some were crushed into a shapeless mass of lime others retained their shape and all by some convulsion were afterward lifted high into the air the entire ocean is as thickly populated with these atoms as the drop of fresh water the shelled forms are as constantly dying the shells falling or sinking in a continual rain of shells upon the bottom piling up eternally who shall estimate their countless numbers it is believed that these minute shells are as abundant down to a depth of six hundred feet as they are at the surface there are more than sixteen tons of limey shells floating in the uppermost one hundred fathoms of every square mile of the ocean these facts convey an idea of one way in which the earth is growing increasing in size but not in weight as these delicate creatures merely secrete the carbonate of lime which forms their shells they take it from the surrounding water of which it had been a part it would be of great interest to learn exactly how these humble creatures take lime from the water and produce shells of such marvellous beauty to learn why one is of lime and others like the radiolarians are of silica why some live at the surface and are free swimmers while others creep about in the ooze when the deep-sea explorers first began to dredge they found over vast areas a peculiar mud or ooze and investigation showed that it was formed almost entirely of the shells of a certain minute shell maker from which it was named the globigerina ooze finding these vast banks or beds of mud at this depth is suggestive that the deepest seas may yet be filled by the dropping of this invisible rain but as the average depth of the ocean is nearly if not quite three miles many centuries must pass before this can be accomplished the marvellous phosphorescent light previously described came from a minute armoured form known as peridinium but even this is exceeded by the glories of a little monad called noctiluca it is a giant of the tribe and is visible to the naked eye being almost as large as the head of a pin and resembling a current in shape it has a single hair-like organ or lash supposed to be a locomotive organ by which it whirls itself through the water of all the light givers of the sea this is the most common some of its species being found in every sea and where they are it is necessary only to splash the water to cause a blaze of light to follow a french naturalist placed on record the fact that so brilliant was the light occasioned by this minute organism in african waters that he read by their light standing on a beach where a heavy surf came pounding in upon the sand the light of this little creature is remarkable not only for its vividness but for its many different tints now it is a fitful vivid green again the water is a blaze of yellow light or orange at such times when a ship is ploughing along the light is so brilliant that the sails and rigging are brilliantly illuminated casting weird shadows some noctiluce emit a clear blue light but when the same animal is disturbed it appears white with green and blue flashes of great beauty and intensity a telling illustration of the boundless and marvellous resources of nature many interesting experiments have been tried with these dainty light givers a tube fifteen millimeters in diameter was filled with them and by shaking this novel lamp a printed page was read a foot distance yet when a delicate thermometer was thrust into the fiery mass the mercury was not affected in the slightest showing that here was that wonder of wonders vivid light without heat a secret which man has vainly endeavored to wrest from nature.

The vast number of these minute creatures can be realized when it is said that the ship Magenta sailed nearly five hundred miles among swarms of Noctilucae, which gave splendid displays of phosphorescent light at night.

Sometimes the light emitted was milky white, again it was green or blue, the different species possessing different colors.

End of chapter 1