Nature
PUBLISHED
We all know how beautiful marine life can be; corals lush with purple, fish splashed with orange as bright as fire and blue as deep as a sapphire. The ocean is full of life that is guaranteed to tickle anyone's visual senses. Now researchers have found that marine esthetics doesn't end with what we can see; there is much, much more than meets the eye. They have discovered more than 180 species which will astound you with their previously unknown beauty. The beauty of biofluorescence.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.You may have heard of bioluminescence before, but biofluorescence is different. Bioluminescence involves a reaction whereby chemical energy is converted into light energy, which produces and emits light. Biofluorescence, however, involves no such reactions. Instead, a high energy wavelength of light, such as blue light, is absorbed. Upon absorption, it loses some of its energy and is then emitted at a different, lower wavelength, such as green. And this is happening in a remarkable number of species, ranging from seahorses to sharks; take a look in the publication for some amazing snaps.
In order for the scientists to visualize and record these neon secrets, they used a blue light that recreates the almost monochromatic light that the animals live in in the ocean. This is because with depth, the red, green, orange and yellow components of sunlight are removed, leaving only blue light. Then, in order to see the light that is being reflected from these animals, they used different color filters on the camera lens. Check out what they found in this amazing video:
Nature is awesome.
1