The 240 dives used to perform this survey were all research trips he had conducted personally since arriving in 1999 at the institute. It is required reading at some universities. A decade ago, he set up the Bioluminescence Web Page, which offers detailed information about deep creatures, including dozens of dramatic images. Haddock is a world authority on bioluminescence who has published dozens of scientific papers on luminescent ocean life. It was established in 1987 by David Packard, the billionaire co-founder of Hewlett-Packard and a creator of Silicon Valley.ĭr. The research institute - in Moss Landing, Calif., at the midpoint of the Monterey Bay shoreline - is a pioneer of deep ocean exploration. The ranks include not only fireflies but also some beetles, millipedes and earthworms. And the land creatures that light up, unlike their undersea kin, constitute a tiny minority. Over the decades, scientists have traced the evolutionary roots of the living oceanic lights to primal seas hundreds of millions of years ago, long before the age of dinosaurs.īy contrast, terrestrial bioluminescence is relatively new. “You see sparks in the water and have no idea what they represent.” “A lot of these questions are centuries old,” Dr. Haddock, both of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. Steven Haddock/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research InstituteĪs the deep sea is the planet’s largest habitat, the new findings confirm bioluminescence to be one of the earth’s dominant ecological traits, despite its unfamiliarity, according to Dr. Tomopteris, a genus of sea worms, emits blue light, but one species can produce yellow. The result? Most of the creatures - a stunning 76 percent - made their own light, vastly outnumbering the ranks of the unlit, such as dolphins. Then, the researchers merged the results into a comprehensive survey. Beebe’s pioneering dive, scientists have succeeded in gauging the actual extent of bioluminescence in the deep ocean.ĭuring 240 research dives in the Pacific, they recorded every occurrence and kind of glowing sea creature - more than 500 types living down as deep as two miles. The sheer variety suggested that bioluminescence was fairly common, but no scientist came up with a measurement of the phenomenon. The living lights emanated from tiny fish with needlelike fangs, and gelatinous brutes with thousands of feeding tentacles. Over the decades, biologists learned that the creatures of the deep sea use light much as animals on land use sound - to lure, intimidate, stun, mislead and find mates. The colors included pale greens, blues, reds and especially blue-greens, which by nature can travel far in seawater. Nothing, he added in his book, “Half Mile Down,” had prepared him for the spectacular displays. “It seemed to explode,” he said of one luminous creature. Later, he described an unfamiliar world of dancing lights, pale glows and beguiling shimmers. In 1932, William Beebe wedged his lanky body into a cramped submersible and became the first scientist to descend into the sea’s inky darkness.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |