CONQUERING DARKNESS
‘Want to snorkel in bioluminescence?’ It was a question I couldn’t get out of my head.
When the weather in Cape Town turns warm and the wind dies down to a whisper, nature brings a most spectacular sight. Under these extremely rare circumstances, algal blooms thrive and if the weather stays clear and warm, the bloom is so vast it causes a red tide.
By day these large concentrations of aquatic micro-organisms - dinoflagellates - can look like red muck floating on the surface. But by night, when the conditions are right, it transforms the ocean into a glowing blue lightshow. Because, thanks to a chemical reaction produced by a light-emitting molecule called luciferin that’s found in these organisms, they produce bioluminescence.
Left alone they make very little light But when something swims past them or disturbs the water, they react with an enzyme called luciferase, which produces a byproduct, oxyluciferin. This chemical reaction produces light - which we call bioluminescence.
The idea of swimming in it had never occurred to me.
Which is why I found myself on Graeme Grant’s Sea Otter chugging out of Simon’s Town harbour and into the calm waters of False Bay.
Graeme is the owner and operator of Oceans Africa, a marine company that runs charters for scuba divers, snorkellers and whale watchers, as well as occasional sundowner chasers. With 25 years’ experience he has pretty much seen all there is from Cape fur seals and great whites to whales. But for him, bioluminescence
