Sunday, March 25, 2007

Liquid diamonds.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday and I missed it because a) I am far away, b) I don't have access to email on weekends and c) the phone I was given appears to be locked so that I can't make international calls. Oops. Sorry mommy. I will write to you today.

I went to the British High Commission's private beach-house at Toké beach on Friday night. There were about 22 other expats there and the night was spent roasting marshmallows and hotdogs, eating fish freshly taken from the ocean and grilled on the stove, swimming under the stars and sleeping next to the fire.

The last time I went to the BHC beach we noticed something beautiful occurring at night in the water, something that Michelle called "phosphorescence." I don't know how the hell I'd ever describe it, but I will try: When you swim at night and swish your arms around under water, where bubbles would normally appear, rise brightly illuminated strange "lights." They are not actually "lights" but appear as such. You get the impression that you have come across a nest of some kind of underwater lightbugs and that they are all scattering in a panic as a result of your movement. It is an absolutely incredible thing to witness and we squealed and jumped about trying to make more of these bugs/reflections/whatevers appear. We spent much time discussing whether these bright lights were a result of the reflection of the fire, a reflection of the moonlight, a result of our drunken eyes imagining something, or whether it was biological in origin. It was decided, however, that the light cast off from the fire was entirely too far away, as was (of course) the moon. This was not a reflection of external light but probably the result of some ocean bacteria, much like the bright colours you see exhibited by corals and tropical fish. Michelle's endless talk of "No, it's phosphorescence, I know it! That's what it's called, I swear!" convinced us that this phenomenon was a) not caused by drunken hallucinations b) particular to certain areas of the world, and c) actually named something specific. I disagreed with Michelle's term for it because to be "phosphorescent" is, to me anyway, a description of something much more general, like glow-in-the-dark stickers and blacklights. They experience phosphorescence also, don't they? So what the hell is this particular phosphorescent thing? I repeatedly swore that I would look it up on Wikipedia and indeed did so, skimming over most of the technical jargon but realising that Michelle was probably right - this thing was not mentioned, but it is still definitely phosphorescent. Whatever this thing is, I never found out what it was.
I will never be able to adequately describe the beauty caused by swishing your hands around underwater in almost-blackness when you have these blue-white sparkly things, these little dots of cold fire, responding to your touch. But most interestingly, I discovered that these things are definitely a biological phenomenon and not simply a strange underwater lightshow. The first time I'd been at the BHC beach I'd gone swimming at night alone, staring at these lights by myself, convinced that it was just something I was imagining or that was caused by the light of the moon/fire. I eventually came out of the water because I'd found myself being bitten by some kind of underwater bug ("bug?") and the constant pricking of my skin annoyed me too much to stay in the ocean. Shortly afterwards the rest of the gang decided to swim and we all dove in and experienced (together this time) this vision of liquid diamonds underwater.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to experience it again. I went swimming with Justin Hane and American Justin (who does not like to be called that, so I should stop, but how will my readers distinguish the two Justins?)... This time, while swimming, I yanked on some seaweed and viewed the most extraordinary thing: The seaweed, pulled out the water, began to glitter with cool white flashing lights against the skin on my hand. Justin Hane describes them as "little stars that you can hold in your hands, but that slide through your fingers and disappear into the night." That's exactly what it was. Slippery, sparkling, little stars.

The whole phosphorescence thing is *definitely* caused by some kind of bacteria or bug because once again the crowd experienced sudden, strange pinpricks on the skin. It was like being swarmed with mosquitos underwater so we eventually bolted out of the water towards the warmth of the fire. I was personally not assaulted by these underwater bacterial beasts but remembered them from the first trip and found them way too creepy to stay in the water myself. I am positive that the pricking sensation is linked with these wet stars. Beauty and the beast in one entity?

So that's that. Now: Does anyone know what the heck I am talking about?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Bluish flickers visible in ocean water at night often come from blooms of bioluminescent dinoflagellates, which emit short flashes of light when disturbed."


Here's an article written by someone with a bit more flair than the scientific ones I was going to link;

http://www.elenas-vieques.com/bioluminescent.html

at the same time, here's one with tons of details, but still not too dry;

http://www.assurecontrols.com/info-dinoflagellates.htm


:) Martin Ziemba