It was quite a sight this morning off the deck
Red Tide off California Coast Creates Blue Glow
It’s best seen at night. In the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, masses of algae have bloomed to form what’s known as a red tide.
By and large, it is not considered a good thing. The algae are sometimes toxic. They can poison fish or starve them of oxygen.
But then why are people gathering to look, and why are some biologists impressed by it? Because it’s blue.
Peter Franks, a biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said the particular organism causing it, Lingulodinium polyedrum, was his “favorite dinoflagellate.”
Why so? “Because it’s intensely bioluminescent,” he wrote on the blog Deep-Sea News. “When jostled, each organism will give off a flash of blue light created by a chemical reaction within the cell. When billions and billions of cells are jostled — say, by a breaking wave — you get a seriously spectacular flash of light.”