Bioluminescence Is Nature’s Love Light

Imagine being a 22-year-old woman, wondering where new species come from. Imagine this question, burning brightly in your mind, has drawn you to the Florida Keys. One night, you pile into a boat with your graduate school advisor and some labmates, head for open water, and cut the lights. You adjust your snorkel mask, tip your face into the Caribbean Sea, and stare downward.

Nothing.

You wait. Fear prickles your body: The ocean is vast, the pitch blackness that surrounds you disorienting. Did you pick the wrong spot? Did you get the time wrong?

Then, finally—a pinprick of bright blue light.

Another.

Then an array of arcs, swirls, and flashes so dense that it is difficult to tell where one light ends and another begins. “All of a sudden, it was like this whole show that