Milky sea: What Is The Milky Sea Phenomenon

What Is The Milky Sea Phenomenon? The Milky Sea Phenomenon is a rare, natural phenomenon where large areas of the ocean glow vibrantly. This glow sometimes covers over 100,000 square kilometers, appearing as a soft, bluish-white milky light. Unlike the glowing waves often seen near beaches (known as bioluminescence), Milky Seas glow continuously and uniformly, like a blanket spread across the ocean. Milky seas are a luminous phenomenon in the ocean caused by luminous bacteria. They appear as large areas of seawater that glow diffusely and continuously in varying shades of blue, and can be seen from satellites. For the first time, the luminescent nautical phenomenon has been discovered in satellite data and subsequently corroborated by sailors. The light from a milky sea is sometimes described as white, but it is actually blue. It may appear white when detected by human night-time vision, using rod photoreceptors that do not distinguish colors. We were recently able to capture the first satellite images of a milky sea -- and of bioluminescence at all, to our knowledge (Miller, et al. 2005). The image above, prepared by Steve Miller of the Naval Research Lab, shows a composite of two different earth atlases (day and night) with ...