Friday, 13 February 2015

Bioluminescent bloom

As one of my many hobbies Im also a keen photographer turning my hand to many different types of of photography including astro photography. Recently while searching the web I came across some photo's taken at night showing an amazing natural phenomena a Bioluminescent bloom in Hong Kong, this is caused by Noctiluca scintillans. Commonly known as the Sea Sparkle,[1] and also published as Noctiluca miliaris, is a free-living non-parasitic marine-dwelling species of dinoflagellate that exhibits bioluminescence when disturbed (popularly known as mareel). Its bioluminescence is produced throughout the cytoplasm of this single-celled protist, by a luciferin-luciferase reaction in thousands of spherically shaped organelles, called scintillons. Nonluminescent populations within the genus Noctiluca lack these scintillons.
 

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