Sailors’ 400-year logbooks help scientists track Earth’s ghostly glowing seas
Nearly 60 per cent of the 240 recorded milky-sea events flare in one Arabian Sea corridor.
Researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) and NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere have compiled the most complete record to date of the ocean’s rare “milky seas” — vast, steady glows that can blanket more than 38,610 square miles (100,000 km²) of water for weeks.
The open database merges 240 credible eyewitness accounts dating back to the 1600s with modern low-light satellite imagery, giving scientists their first real opportunity to forecast where and when the phenomenon will next appear.