Doug Perrine. 7
It doesn’t get much better than this. It’s a moonless night and you are on a deserted beach in the Maldives. As the waves lap the shore, the beach lights up like Las Vegas. Glowing organisms stick to your feet. It is one of the most magical sights in the natural world: a bloom of bioluminescent plankton.
This picture was taken on Vaadhoo Island, but bioluminescing organisms are found all over the world. The ones here are probably single-celled protists and marine crustaceans called copepods. Both glow when they are disturbed.
“Every so often, one of these bright specks of light would appear to take off and run up the beach,” says photographer Doug Perrine. Ghost crabs were grabbing the glowing organisms and carrying them back to their burrows.
( Rowan Hooper via Short Sharp Science)
