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Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space
Milky seas are a rare form of marine bioluminescence where the nocturnal ocean surface produces a widespread, uniform and steady whitish glow. Mariners have compared their appearance to a daylit snowfield that extends to all horizons. Encountered most often in remote waters of the northwest Indian O...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8322353/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34326427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94823-z |
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author | Miller, Steven D. Haddock, Steven H. D. Straka, William C. Seaman, Curtis J. Combs, Cynthia L. Wang, Menghua Shi, Wei Nam, SungHyun |
author_facet | Miller, Steven D. Haddock, Steven H. D. Straka, William C. Seaman, Curtis J. Combs, Cynthia L. Wang, Menghua Shi, Wei Nam, SungHyun |
author_sort | Miller, Steven D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Milky seas are a rare form of marine bioluminescence where the nocturnal ocean surface produces a widespread, uniform and steady whitish glow. Mariners have compared their appearance to a daylit snowfield that extends to all horizons. Encountered most often in remote waters of the northwest Indian Ocean and the Maritime Continent, milky seas have eluded rigorous scientific inquiry, and thus little is known about their composition, formation mechanism, and role within the marine ecosystem. The Day/Night Band (DNB), a new-generation spaceborne low-light imager, holds potential to detect milky seas, but the capability has yet to be demonstrated. Here, we show initial examples of DNB-detected milky seas based on a multi-year (2012–2021) search. The massive bodies of glowing ocean, sometimes exceeding 100,000 km(2) in size, persist for days to weeks, drift within doldrums amidst the prevailing sea surface currents, and align with narrow ranges of sea surface temperature and biomass in a way that suggests water mass isolation. These findings show how spaceborne assets can now help guide research vessels toward active milky seas to learn more about them. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8322353 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83223532021-07-30 Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space Miller, Steven D. Haddock, Steven H. D. Straka, William C. Seaman, Curtis J. Combs, Cynthia L. Wang, Menghua Shi, Wei Nam, SungHyun Sci Rep Article Milky seas are a rare form of marine bioluminescence where the nocturnal ocean surface produces a widespread, uniform and steady whitish glow. Mariners have compared their appearance to a daylit snowfield that extends to all horizons. Encountered most often in remote waters of the northwest Indian Ocean and the Maritime Continent, milky seas have eluded rigorous scientific inquiry, and thus little is known about their composition, formation mechanism, and role within the marine ecosystem. The Day/Night Band (DNB), a new-generation spaceborne low-light imager, holds potential to detect milky seas, but the capability has yet to be demonstrated. Here, we show initial examples of DNB-detected milky seas based on a multi-year (2012–2021) search. The massive bodies of glowing ocean, sometimes exceeding 100,000 km(2) in size, persist for days to weeks, drift within doldrums amidst the prevailing sea surface currents, and align with narrow ranges of sea surface temperature and biomass in a way that suggests water mass isolation. These findings show how spaceborne assets can now help guide research vessels toward active milky seas to learn more about them. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8322353/ /pubmed/34326427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94823-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Miller, Steven D. Haddock, Steven H. D. Straka, William C. Seaman, Curtis J. Combs, Cynthia L. Wang, Menghua Shi, Wei Nam, SungHyun Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title | Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title_full | Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title_fullStr | Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title_full_unstemmed | Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title_short | Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
title_sort | honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8322353/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34326427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94823-z |
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