Haddock was so enchanted by this tale that he asked Shimomura if he could take a small portion of the ostracods back to his own laboratory at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. He keeps them in a container no larger than a spice jar, which he rarely opens. \u201cI\u2019ve only tested it five or six times,\u201d he says. But if you\u2019re lucky, and the mood strikes, he just might take his little genie lamp off the shelf and conjure that ethereal glow.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The bioluminescence of ostracods, a type of crustacean, has played a unique role in maritime history, creating a light bright enough to light maps for soldiers to read. Photo by blickwinkel\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p><\/div>\n
What is it about bioluminescence that we find so mesmerizing? Light, after all, is abundant. Each morning, an immense bowl of light lifts itself above the trees and rooftops, higher than birds and mountains, and spills its golden contents. Sunlight washes over the continents and oceans, dripping down forest canopies and pooling in valleys and deserts; it splashes silently across farms and cities; it slips into our bedrooms, seeps beneath our skin, and tunnels through our eyes to illuminate the theater of the mind. Yet we can\u2019t seem to get enough light, or feel close enough to it. Throughout history, many cultures have told stories of people and beings wreathed with halos or imbued with an irrepressible brilliance: gods, angels, fairies, saints, and jinns. To be infused with light is to be divine or supernatural, precisely because it is an impossibility for us.<\/p>\n
Failing to summon light from within, we found other ways to generate and control it, to keep it nearby even in the Sun\u2019s absence: we tamed fire and channeled electricity; we learned to fling bombs of color against the veil of night and line our roofs with gleaming drops of rainbow; we devised powerful beacons that could be summoned at the flip of a switch and erected shining pillars along our streets. Today, some people are even willing to sew LEDs beneath their skin in order to backlight tattoos, or simply for sheer novelty<\/a>. But it is all pretense. Despite our slick technology, we have never truly matched the ostracod or firefly. We cannot equal their intuitive mastery of illumination. Light is woven into their very biology in a way we have never known. \u201cFor an organism to make light, especially to have a big display of light, seems to us like a superpower,\u201d Haddock says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a power we could not resist exploiting. For millennia, people have devised ingenious applications for bioluminescence, many of which are little known today. Roman naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder wrote that one could rub the slime of a certain luminous jellyfish, possibly Pelagia noctiluca<\/em>, onto a walking stick to make it double as a torch. In the late 17th century, the physician Georg Eberhard Rumphius described indigenous peoples of Indonesia using bioluminescent fungi as flashlights in the forest. And before the 19th century, coal miners filled jars with fireflies, as well as dried fish skin crawling with bioluminescent bacteria, to serve as lanterns; the safety lamp had not yet been invented and carrying an open flame into a cave risked igniting explosive gas.<\/p>\n The bioluminescent jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca<\/em> glows when it is disturbed. It also can create a luminous mucus. Photo by David Fleetham\/Corbis<\/p><\/div>\n It took much longer for people to find uses for ostracods and other tiny gleaming sea creatures because, for most of human history, no one knew they existed. Early explorers puzzled over ribbons and specks of light around boats and oars, as well as radiant waves and regions of shining water sometimes known as \u201cmilky seas.\u201d Initial attempts to explain such phenomena were often closer to poetry than science. For many, light was akin to fire, even if it was in water. Hai Nei Shih Chou Chi<\/em>, a fourth- or fifth-century-BCE Chinese text detailing nautical adventures, states that, \u201cone may see fiery sparks when the water is stirred.\u201d Likewise, in the 17th century, French philosopher Ren\u00e9 Descartes likened the light seen in agitated seawater to sparks struck off flint. During a cruise to Siam in 1688, Jesuit missionary and mathematician Guy Tachard wrote that the Sun had ostensibly \u201cimpregnated and filled the sea during the day with an infinity of fiery and luminous spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1753, Benjamin Franklin surmised that some sort of \u201cextremely small animalcule\u201d in water \u201cmay yet give a visible light.\u201d Around the same time, naturalists such as Godeheu de Riville, equipped with early microscopes, confirmed that Franklin\u2019s hunch was correct: the ocean\u2019s glints and glows emanated from living things, from tiny \u201cmarine insects\u201d we now call plankton. By the early 20th century, bioluminescent plankton were far from unknown entities\u2014they were under intense scrutiny by some of the world\u2019s most powerful military forces, literally caught in the crossfire of human warfare.<\/p>\n When ships and other vessels pass through large groups of bioluminescent plankton, ripples and clouds of green and blue light often form at their sides and in their wake. Those unwanted spotlights have proven problematic for the navy, especially when stealth is required. In 1918, during the First World War, a British ship sunk a German U-boat off the coast of Spain after spying its glowing nimbus. By the Second World War and the Cold War, navies were studying how to track subs and torpedoes with bioluminescence. The United States Navy continues such research today, attempting to develop an aquatic robot that can measure bioluminescence as a way to both detect enemies and prevent an accidental reveal.<\/p>\n<\/a>