Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Ocean X
Topics: Science, Documentaries, Film and TV, Disney
Britt Jones
Topics: Science, Documentaries, Film and TV, Disney
A filmmaker dove into the depths of the ocean and saw a real-life rare sea event that scientists struggle to explain.
Many people in this world will never dive into the deep sea to see first-hand what lurks below the surface.
However, if you were to do so, you’d see some sights that you thought could only be possible in movies.
There are species we still haven’t discovered in the deepest parts of the ocean, and even more than that we just don’t know a lot about it. This is why a filmmaker and two media colleagues teamed up with an underwater science company to figure out just one phenomenon of many.
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Inspired by OceanX’s new television series on Disney+ called Ocean Explorers, Jacob Harrell decided to go and find and document a phenomenon known as a ‘flashback’ in the deep blue.
This display of deep-sea bioluminescence has yet to be fully explained by science, and it’s rare to be able to even catch it on film.
But Jack did it.
His mission was to capture the one thing that had ‘eluded scientists for years’.
Climbing onboard an exploration ship equipped with the latest tech and science gear, he said that the flashback is ‘rarely documented and incredibly hard to capture to film’, but he had high hopes of being able to do it within the few weeks he was provided.
His mission was to fit in the filming of flashbacks ‘quest in and around the daily Marine surveys being conducted’ in the Indian Ocean, and to also ‘produce a report on biodiversity’ to help the Indonesian government with their conservation efforts.
Flashbacks, he explained with the help of Mattie - OceanXplorer’s science program director - is bioluminescence.
Mattie shared: “When we're talking about flashback, we're talking about bioluminescence in general which basically is animals or organisms that make their own light.”
Jack added that ‘living things producing light through chemical reactions is rare on land but in the ocean, 80% of animals that live between 200 and 1,000m deep are bioluminescent'.
These colours can be blue, red, green or violet depending on the species emitting the light.
While scientists know animals in the sea use this light, they just don’t know why.
Mattie explained: “This one animal might use it for attracting prey, this other animal might use it for escaping or creating a diversion. These other animals might use it as a form of communication. Like, we really don't know because it's so difficult to access the depths of the ocean where bioluminescence occurs.”
If you don’t know what bioluminescence is after that explanation, according to Ocean Explorer, it is the ability to create light.
The page explained that bioluminescence is most common in fish, squid, and what we call the gelatinous zooplankton’ (jellyfish, siphonophores, comb jellies, and other animals that are mostly made of water).
These species use a reaction between an enzyme and a substrate to make the light, but they might use different chemicals in the process.
While Jack eventually managed to capture a ‘weak’ flashback in the ocean, the website states that it is hard to observe, as you have to turn on a blast of light for the organism to flash back at, which could lead to organisms moving away from the area.
The light beam could also blind those that are sensitive to light.
As for Jack and the team, they sat at the bottom of the ocean bed at around 375m and flashed large beams of light, resulting in a beautiful display of flashback above them.