Untold Earth

The closest thing I can think to imagining bioluminescence without it being bioluminescence are the stars.

It's magical that in the sky you can see all these stars, and then in the water you can see all these stars.

I think that's what makes it so captivating for a lot of people.

From Aristotle to Darwin, humankind's effort to understand bioluminescence spans thousands of years.

But even though it's one of the oldest fields of scientific study, the answers remain elusive.

What is it about this inscrutable mystery that inspires such obsession?

Well, the history of Suquamish tribe, we've been here for thousands of years.

We had villages all through this immediate area over in the Hood canal and down in Bremerton and all over Kitsap Peninsula.

There isn't really that much known about bioluminescence in the Salish Sea.

I think that's what makes it really special is a lot of people think about bioluminescence in these tropical regions, but we have it right up here in this very diverse and rich environment.

I grew up in Seattle, Washington.

I didn't really know that much about it.

I went to one sleepaway camp and I remember getting woken up in the middle of the night.

The counselors all pulled us campers down to the shore and started swimming in it.

And we were like, What?

That's crazy.

And then I learned about this internship and I was like, That is perfect.

So bioluminescence is a chemical reaction that occurs in a living organism, in an oxygenated environment.

We think about plankton in general as a lot of tiny, really tiny, microscopic free floating organisms.

Within that, there are a group of plankton called algae.

Microscopic algae are split up into two different sectors, one of which is diatoms, and then the other are dinoflagellates.

And what I'm interested are dinoflagellates, because some of these dinoflagellates are bioluminescent.

My name is Carly.

I've been guiding here, working here for about a month.

And the cool thing about tonight and for the bioluminescence tours is we have Lucy here.

I'm taking over her internship this summer with the hopes to keep doing it every summer so someone can come and keep following up on the research.

We'll paddle out of the bay here, and then there's a cool little lagoon that we're going to go into.

Altight, Crystal, your rudder's coming down, you have steering.

We'll see you out there.

So they're not going to start bioluminescing until they know it's nighttime out.

So the ones that we're seeing now are just the early risers.

They just had their cup of coffee.

They're just coming out.

If we were out here at 2 a.m., more of them would be bioluminescing because they know it's nighttime.

Because it's so energetically costly for them they save it for when it's going to be good.

Go paddle around.

Some patches will be better than others.

But play around, figure out a way that is really cool to see them and let us know.

It's beautiful!

Sparkle, sparkle!

I don't think you can feel them, but it almost feels like you can.

It makes it truly magic.

Like seeing it on your skin, on your fingers.

It's so cool.

We take samples as we're doing those tours and guiding people, and then we get to go back and do some lab work on it.

Fun part about this research is sometimes it means that Carly and I become a little nocturnal because we are trying to process some of these samples right as we get back.

I was trying to identify some dinoflagellates that were present during the bioluminescent events and who could maybe be participating in that.

Seems like more diatoms.

That can be some sort of algae.

And I found four known bioluminescent species that were in all my samples.

This right here.

There's research done that in the deep sea ocean, where light can't penetrate, Ninety percent of organisms can emit bioluminescence.

It is such a common form of communication among this species and on this Earth, and that it's just something that's so hard for humans to study that we haven't thought that much about.

That is exciting.

And that's fun to see.

And I think that might even be one right next to it, right there.

Either one of them could be emitting bioluminescence.

So fascinating how all of them are single celled organisms.

They don't seem like they're multifaceted and they don't seem like they're complicated, but yet they create this thing that's so special to see.

Fishing on the Salish Sea?

Well, I love every part of it.

It's our right.

It's what we do for our people.

My grandfather, he traveled all over harvesting salmon.

And my dad, too, trying to teach the youth how to carry on what we're doing here and preserve it.

I know it's around here.

You know, it's hard to catch Salmon when that stuff lights up your net because it's just like a big flashlight down there.

A big wall of lights is what it looks like.

And I always wonder what that stuff was about.

Bioluminescent algae that we're concerned with, we're still kind of figuring out why they might be using it.

The first of which is maybe that it's scaring or stunning a predator, the second that maybe it's attracting a secondary predator.

And so then something eats the predator going after those bioluminescent algae.

There's definitely an evolutionary advantage to it because so many different things have evolved the ability.

These bioluminescent algae are very much at the bottom of the food chain.

And then that in turn can serve to produce a lot of oxygen in our environments.

Little small fish will eat plankton, and then bigger fish like salmon can eat the smaller fish and all the way up into marine mammals such as seals than our orcas.

It's all interconnected and it's a really special environment.

In the Salish Sea region, we don't actually know a lot about how these bioluminescent algae, could be affecting the health of this ecosystem.

And so I think that that's really important about what Carly and I's research is tackling in that we are trying to answer these more basic questions that can hopefully provide an answer about whether more abundant bioluminescent algae is good or bad for this ecosystem, or whether or not it doesn't have an influence.

Or maybe it's just about having the right balance of these species.

I think what drives me is the mystery of a lot of it.

You can put on your goggles and your snorkel and swim in it and it's right in front of your eyes and it's so special to have something magical like that that you can really interact with.

I think it plays into that same kind of childlike explorative behavior in me.

It's lovely.