For over 400 years, sailors have reported witnessing the ocean light up as far as the eye can see. But what is causing this, and why?
But before the scientific details are discussed, let’s talk about its sightings. The most popular account of this phenomenon is Captain Raphael Semmes. On January 30th, 1864, the Confederate warship CSS, named Alabama, sailed through a patch of what they called “Milky Sea.” Captain Raphael Semmes wrote about it in his cabin, saying “At about eight P.M., there being no moon, but the sky being clear, and the stars shining brightly, we suddenly passed from the deep blue water in which we had been sailing, into a patch of water so white that it startled me…. The whole face of nature seemed changed, and with a little stretch of the imagination, the Alabama might have been conceived to be a phantom ship lighted up by the sickly and unearthly glare of a phantom sea…” But he’s not the only account of seeing this, J. Brunskill, an officer aboard the Ixlon, which sailed through the Arabian Sea in 1967. He described it as “The whole face of nature seemed changed, and with a little stretch of the imagination, the Alabama might have been conceived to be a phantom ship lighted up by the sickly and unearthly glare of a phantom sea…”
While this phenomenon used to be unexplainable back then, modern science now has an answer as to why this happens. Although, it’s tricky to study them at all since whenever it does happen, which is rare, it’s usually in remote places. It can last for months and stretch as wide as 39,000 square miles, big enough to be seen from space. Anyways, the glowing effect is likely caused as a byproduct of high concentrations of microscopic bioluminescent bacteria called Vibrio Harveyi. This hypothesis is based on a 1985 chance encounter by a research vessel collected and tested a water sample during the Milky Sea phenomenon. But besides this hypothesis, how it forms and lights up the sea is still unknown. Scientists have relied on previous accounts for any data available. All that’s been noted is that the Milky Sea mainly appears in the Arabian Sea and southeast Asian waters. It’s speculated that it’s caused by global climate events, like the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño Southern Oscillation. But again, not much is known about this strange event, but scientists are still at it.
