Phosphorescence

There is an organism, in most of the world’s oceans, that, when disturbed, briefly emit a greenish-yellow glow; very similar to fire-flies or lightening bugs.  I don’t know if they are algae, plankton or some more simple organism but they are very small and one really only sees them when they phosphoresce.   The phosphorescent glow only lasts a few seconds; however, when there is a large concentration of these organisms it can be a spectacular sight.  My first experience with this phenomenon was in the Atlantic when Lugnuts did the Newport-Bermuda Race.  There were large quantities of them so that, at night, the wake glowed with thousands of points of light.  It is a beautiful and mesmerizing sight.  I have been quite surprised by the lack of phosphorescence that in the Indian Ocean.  I had assumed that it would be the same everywhere as I had seen in the Atlantic.  In the Indian Ocean most nights we only see the occasional glimmer of phosphorescence.  The most we’ve seen was on the first couple of nights after leaving Bali, which brings me to my story.

One of the really great things about sailing, whether it be on Lake Michigan or in the ocean, is that it puts one in places where there is great potential to see wonderful and amazing sights.  As anyone on the Lugnuts crew can confirm, we have seen the most remarkable sunsets and sunrises, storm clouds, lightning, calms, stars and falling stars, among many other beautiful sights.  We often remark, while in awe of some remarkable sight, that many of these sights can only be seen from the deck of a boat.  I was pretty confident that, during 8 months at sea, I would be seeing some more amazing sights.  Little did I know that one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen would present itself on my very first night watch at sea.

We left Bali at about 1400 on Sunday, October 26^th.  When we went to sea the crew was divided from 2 shore watches into 3 night watches and I was placed on the 12 to 4 watch.  Leaving port we were “all hands” until around 1800 so my first official watch was from midnight until 0400 on 10/27.  During the night watches, one of the duties we share is forward lookout, where for one hour shifts a crew member stands at the bow and keeps a sharp eye out of any hazards or other traffic.  I had my first turn on lookout from 0200-0300.  The moon was either new or waning very small that night so it was pretty dark and the stars were amazing and there was a moderate amount of phosphorescence in the water.  I was trying to remember to keep looking around for hazards and not just gaze at the stars when I noticed a strange light in the water near the bow.  When I looked for it I thought that it must have been a whitecap that I saw glowing a little but then I realized it was turned in the wrong direction so I started watching more closely nearer to the bow.  I saw another long slash of phosphorescence going at an angle to the wake of the ship but this time I was watching and it turned out that I had a small pod of 5 dolphins swimming in and around the bow wave of the ship.  It was so dark that I would not have been able to seem them at all if not for the phosphorescence but the darkness made the phosphorescence that much brighter to my eye and make the whole scene truly amazing.  The phosphorescence glowed from the nose of each dolphin and all around their bodies and then left a glowing wake behind each one for about another length of its body, so that a 4 foot long dolphin swam in the front half of an 8 foot long torpedo of green light.  The phosphorescence was bright enough that I could clearly see the entire length of each dolphin, in detail, as they swam in and out of the bow wave.  It appeared to me that they were taking turns getting into the best part of the bow wave and then veering off to circle back up from behind the bow and wait until the spot was open again.  I had the privilege of being able to watch them for about 10 minutes before they swam off.  I was absolutely spellbound the entire time and my turn on lookout ended just a few minutes after they left.  They came back (or more showed up) about 10 minutes into the next watch and I was told they stayed and played for about 20 minutes that time.

When I was relieved at lookout I excitedly told my relief about the dolphins.  My relief was Emile, a 21 year old Dane who sailed previously on the Denmark, and he was not impressed at all.  He said, “You’ll see so many dolphins on this trip that you began not to notice.”  I found I had to go find Turi, our watch’s other new trainee, just to find someone to share my excitement with.  Since that first night, I’ve seen dolphins one other time in the daylight and that was very brief.  There have been a couple of times that crewmates have seen whales breathing but I have not seen that yet myself.  I can’t imagine that I will ever find seeing these animals in their natural habitat to be a mundane sight.  I would love to be able to show you pictures, although I doubt pictures would do the sight justice, but there was no way I was going to walk away to get my camera while the dolphins were there.  That day I started my journal entry with the statement, “I will probably repeat this phrase many time here but, I saw the most amazing thing today!”