A glow bright enough to read by
Milky seas differ from plankton’s flickering blue pinpoints on many coastlines. Instead, they emit a uniform white or pale-green light, bright enough to read a logbook by and sometimes visible from space.
The leading suspect is Vibrio harveyi, a luminous bacterium that colonises algae. When bacterial numbers cross a critical threshold, they switch on in unison, a process called quorum sensing. Yet direct evidence is scant: only one research vessel sampled a milky sea in 1985.
“It’s hard to study something you can’t find,” said lead author Justin Hudson, a PhD candidate in CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science. “Our archive should let expeditions steer to a target while the glow is still active and finally collect the biology and chemistry we need.”