Friday Night Lights . . . Like nothing I've ever seen.

[Skitterpop]

Originally Posted by baldwin

That light was, indeed, caused by plankton. Specifically, the responsible party is known as dinoflaggelates. They are little, mobile critters that kind of blur the line between plant and animal. They are related to the organisms that cause red tide. When disturbed, a chemical reaction occurs between a protein called Luciferin (from Greek Lucifer, meaning "bearer of light" and an enzyme called Luciferase, producing what people used to call "cold light". This is similar to the reaction that lights up horny fireflies, and is also produced by organisms called ostracods, but ostracods live in the sediments. What you saw was definitely dinoflagellates.
Dinoflaggelates caused problems with Navy Seals in the first Gulf War, when they were trying to sneak stealthily onto the Kuwaiti beach, but left a bright glowing trail behind them. On a brighter note, pilots in WWII were often able to find their aircraft carriers by the luminescent trail extending for miles behind the ships. Japanese soldiers in the Pacific used to smear the stuff on the backs of the soldiers in front of them to keep in line in the jungle night without giving their positions away with artificial light.
It's pretty cool stuff.

Baldwin: can these (diatoms?) transfer to other critters? Example....grass shrimp, small squid, schools of baitfish, etc. ?