Mariners have long told of rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows intensely as far as the eye can see in all directions.

Fictionally, such a "milky sea" is encountered by the Nautilus in Jules Verne classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

Scientists don't have a good handle what's going on. But satellite sensors have now provided the first pictures of a milky sea and given new hope to learning more about the elusive events.

The newly released images show a vast region of the Indian Ocean, about the size of Connecticut, glowing three nights in a row. The luminescence was also spotted from a ship in the area.

"The circumstances under which milky seas form is almost entirely unknown," says Steven Miller, a Naval Research Laboratory scientist who led the space-based discovery. "Even the source for the light emission is under debate."

The leading idea

Scientists suspect bioluminescent bacteria are behind the phenomenon. Such creatures produce a continuous glow, in contrast to the brief, bright flashes of light produced by "dinoflagellate" bioluminescent organims that are seen more commonly lighting up ship wakes and breaking waves.

"The problem with the bacteria hypothesis is that an extremely high concentration of bacteria must exist before they begin to produce light," Miller told LiveScience. "But what could possibly support the occurrence of such a large population?"

One idea, put forward by the lone research vessel to ever encounter a milky sea, is that the bacteria are not free-living, but instead are living off some local supporting "substrate."

"This previous excursion reported the presence of bioluminescent bacteria, which were found to be living in association with an algal bloom," Miller explained.

"So, our best working hypothesis is that we are witnessing bioluminescence produced by bacteria that are colonizing some kind of organic material present in the water," he said. "Satellite detection will hopefully allow us to target milky seas with properly equipped research vessels that will then be able to answer all these questions definitively."

The mysterious seas

The event occurred in 1995 and was finally analyzed and reported last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The mystery highlights how little scientists know about the ocean. Milky seas appear to be most prevalent in the Indian Ocean, where there are many trade routes, and near Indonesia.

"But there could be other areas we simply don't know about yet," Miller said. "In fact, we're already beginning to receive feedback from additional witnesses of milky seas. Some of these accounts occurred in regions we had not thought to look before, and we're currently working to find matches with the satellite data."

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/05 ... _glow.html

the abyss

There was one night we were doing a patrol down by the Somali border away from the ambient light of Djibouti City. Once we got down there and I whipped out the NVG's, something wasn't right, there was a huge source of light coming from the southeast. Once we got up on top of our observation mountain it was pretty clear that the ocean was emitting quite a bit of light miles out to sea off the Somali cost. Once our eyes had fully adjusted you could really so the sky glowing where there was nothing but ocean. It was different.

It's obviously a divine creation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Nuclear submarine with a containment leak.

Its a little off subject but regarding the nods. I used to see some weird things in the sky with them. You could easily track satellites with them and watch them go across the sky, but many of us also seen quite a few unidentified items as well. Things flying in a perfectly stright line, then stopping, reversing direction, or making 90 degree turns on a pin head. It was kinda creepy.

It was always kinda fun to watch people doing things they thought no one could see, and here we were a full platoon on patrol watching them like it was the middle of the day.

Ok i am nowhere near the subject, i shall leave now

Youkan

Holy Shit! That's Somalia!

What I would have seen would bave been off the coast of the Gulf of Aden though.

Maybe its the wreckage from the Somali pirate vessels that fire on American warships. Those pirates don't appear to be very intelligent.

maybe