Twenty thousand leagues over the seas : the first satellite perspective on bioluminescent ‘ milky seas ’

Cover Twenty thousand leagues over the seas: the first satellite perspective on bioluminescent 'milky seas' View from the satellite perspective of a bioluminescent 'milky sea' located ,280 km off the coast of Somalia on the night of 25 January 1995 as observed by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (OLS) and confirmed independently by ship-based observers. The vast area of brightly glowing seawater (exceeding 15,000 km 2) is highlighted in false-colour to simulate the blue/ green light emission of the luminous bacteria thought to be responsible for producing these massive displays. The remainder of the scene is constructed from a blended composite of satellite datasets for terrain (NASA Blue Marble, based on Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)), city lights (NGDC; 2003 OLS database over the night time portion of the scene), and cloud cover (Meteosat-5 visible imagery over the daytime portion of the scene). Satellite remote sensing offers new hope for targeting these elusive and poorly understood phenomena with research vessels. Taken from figure 2 of the paper ''Twenty thousand leagues over the seas: the first satellite perspective on bioluminescent 'milky seas''' by S.D. Miller et al., which is published in this issue (see pp. 5131–5143). Maritime folklore is replete with accounts of the nighttime ocean surface producing an intense glow likened to a cloudbank or snowfield for as far as the eye can see. While scientists have postulated bioluminescence as being the cause for these so-called 'milky seas', their full explanation remains a mystery due to the inherent difficulties of obtaining in situ measurements of events in progress. Presented here are details pertaining to the first satellite-based detection of a milky sea—an area of the Indian Ocean roughly 300 km long by 50 km wide was observed to glow over three nights. These findings, confirmed by surface reports, reveal an unanticipated application of low-light satellite sensors, and provide a new means toward understanding the formation, scale, and ecological role of these extraordinary and poorly understood phenomena.