The Ocean Institute’s Bioluminescence Cruises brighten summer nights.
Just outside Dana Point Harbor, the magic really begins.
The water churns and ripples alongside the R/V Explorer, stirring up a living, glowing ocean at night. The guests scramble on the deck and marvel at the natural wonders just inches beyond their reach. A chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” rings in the air.
Everyone has just learned a new word: bioluminescence. And for the next two hours, they’ll learn what it really means.
A few summer nights a month, Dana Point’s Ocean Institute leads a Bioluminescence Night Cruise where guests — often families — see a tiny world most people didn’t even know exists. A world with a charm all its own. A world at the bottom of the food chain.
But that first moment of magic, like everything else in the natural world, can change.
“Sometimes it can be patchy and the currents can move the plankton that cause bioluminescence around,” says Port Captain Jack Parker. “Sometimes it’s right out of the harbor and sometimes it takes a few minutes once we’re out of the harbor to see it. I always know when we find it though, even from the wheelhouse, because of everyone’s ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ when they see it for the first time.”
The bioluminescence is created by single-celled organisms called dinoflagellates that use it essentially as a defense mechanism against predators.
Shortly after the chorus subsides, crew members lower a net 600 feet below the boat to scoop up thousands of tiny organisms that create their own light. Turning on the so-called “squid light,” an ocean food chain is revealed, with dolphins and sea lions feeding on the fish and squid, and so the chain works, right down to the plankton.
“I personally love the planktonic world,” Public Programs Coordinator Amanda Mertens says. “There are so many different species that are all so unique and we have no idea until we put them under a microscope. Bioluminescence is one of the most interesting and unique adaptations in nature, so that alone teaches us that every organism, no matter how small, has a specific role in the ecosystem and different ways it is adapted for that role.”
Parker loves it too and says “one of the coolest parts of the Bioluminescence Cruise is checking out what we caught in the net under the microscope. Watching the plankton can be very mesmerizing, and the importance of them cannot be understated. They produce the majority of our oxygen, at around 70 percent, and because of the vastness of the ocean, you never know what you are going to find. I’ve been a captain here for a few years and I still see things under the microscope that I can’t identify and have to look up.”
The questions Mertens is most often peppered with are how and why the water glows.
“Some people don’t even realize the glowing is caused by a living thing, and that’s honestly the best, since you get to blow their minds about the fact that an algae is creating something so beautiful.”
But Parker likes that people also ask more complicated questions, because it implies they’re really interested.
“A lot of people ask why we have to lower the net so deep when we’re seeing the water glowing at the surface,” he says. “We’re trying to reach the scattering layer, the depth of water where the concentration of organisms is the highest. Some nights, we may not see any bioluminescence on the surface, if there’s not an algae bloom causing high concentrations of dinoflagellates, but we almost always find them with our net.”
As the cruise ends and guests return to the dock with smiles, Mertens and Parker can wax philosophic.
Mertens hopes “both parents and children understand the beauty and complexity of nature and how everything plays an important role in the ecosystem.”
Parker, who believes “there is just something magical about being out on the ocean at night with the stars and the glowing water,” adds his hope that “everyone comes away with a little more knowledge about the world around them and how the ocean is an important part of that.”
Check oceaninstitute.org for monthly tickets.
By Shawn Price
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