On warm, moonless nights in New Zealand, they fan out across beaches in search of an elusive, glittering quarry.
They are not hunters, but photographers on the hunt for bioluminescence, a natural phenomenon where glowing algae give crashing waves an ethereal, electric blue look.
New Zealand is a particularly good place to “hunt organic”, as enthusiasts there say. Still, it’s notoriously difficult to predict where and when bioluminescence will appear. And shooting in near-total darkness — at 3 a.m., knee-deep in the surf with a tripod attached — presents additional obstacles.
“It’s very, very hard to spot something, and sometimes it comes down to blind luck,” said one of those enthusiasts, Matthew Davison, 37, who lives in Auckland and sometimes stays out until dawn to photograph bioluminescence. .
“But part of the appeal and part of the adventure is that because it’s so hard, that’s what makes it exciting,” he added. “When you find it, when you hit the blue gold, it’s just such a good feeling.”
Sounding a ‘burglar alarm’
Bioluminescence is relatively rare on land, but is common in the ocean. About four in five animals living 200 to 1,000 meters (650 to 3,300 feet) below the surface are bioluminescent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The glow appears in different colors on land, but in oceans it usually appears blue-green because it cuts through seawater best.
Bioluminescent organisms — from fireflies to anglerfish — create light from energy released by chemical reactions in their bodies.
While many scientists, including Aristotle and Darwin, have been fascinated with bioluminescence over the centuries, the behavioral motivations for it are still somewhat of a mystery, said Kenneth H. Nealson, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California who studied the phenomenon. for decades.
Scientists generally think that organisms light up to communicate with each other, to attract or track down prey, or to warn or evade predators.
The most popular explanation for why algae in the oceans glow is the “burglar alarm” hypothesis, Professor Nealson said. It involves the organisms glowing when large fish swim by to deter smaller fish that eat algae.
Coastal waters turn blue during periods when algae, which live on the surface of oceans, multiply in particularly nutrient-rich waters. The specific flashes of blue-green light come in response to pressure changes that create waves as they crash.
The waves pose no threat to algae, Professor Nealson said, but algal blooms light up anyway because algae are programmed to respond to pressure changes that fish create as they swim by in the open ocean.
“That luminescence probably isn’t helpful at all for those algae that are on the cusp of the wave and give off the light,” Professor Nealson said. “But if they were a little further offshore, it could be a really good behavior mechanism,” because it could help them deter predators.
see blue
Photographers hunting bioluminescence in New Zealand, many of whom work day jobs, say summer is generally the best time to spot it. (Summer runs from December to March in the Southern Hemisphere.) Nights after showers are best, they say, because water flowing from land into the ocean often contains nutrient-rich material that attracts algae.
Mr. Davison, a product developer for a technology company, has a method for finding bioluminescence. First, he studies satellite images to identify algal blooms off the coast. It then combs through other indicators, such as wind direction and tide patterns, to predict where the water might glow.
However, he is an exception. Other photographers rely mostly on a mix of luck, intuition and the occasional tip from neighbors spotting blue sparks during beach walks.
“If I’m being very honest, probably eight times out of ten I capture it, it’s coincidence or just a feeling that it might be there,” said Grant Birley, 48, who works in the orthopedic industry and often stops to photograph. bioluminescence during his two-hour commute along the coastline of New Zealand’s North Island. “It’s not an educated guess at all.”
One source of information is a closed Facebook group set up two years ago for people in the Auckland area to discuss bioluminescence observations. It now has more than 7,000 members and welcomes about 2,000 new members each summer, said Stacey Ferreira, one of the group’s trustees.
Ms Ferreira said she started the group so that others could “check the beautiful phenomenon off their bucket list”, as she did in 2020. “It was amazing!” she wrote in an email. “People from all backgrounds have joined — talented photography enthusiasts, bioluminescence researchers, scientists, families, and everyone in between.”
Photos in the dark
For “bio-hunters”, finding the glow is just the beginning of the process of capturing a memorable image. After arriving at a beach, they usually set up tripods in the surf and spend hours shooting, sometimes in near-total darkness, as blue spots flicker intermittently across the shore. Sometimes the flicker goes out after a few minutes and they go home empty-handed.
When “bio” is present, a key challenge is deciding how long to expose an image. Birley said the timing can range from one second to nearly two minutes and it can be difficult to check on the fly — by looking at a small camera screen — to see if the exposure times are correct.
Another challenge is that images of bioluminescence sometimes contain details that were not visible when the shutter clicked. That’s because a camera sees a lot more than the naked eye, especially in long nighttime exposures.
“During the day you look and you say, ‘There’s a tree and a sunset and a cliff and I’m going to the left,'” says Alistair Bain, 38, a high school teacher who lives near Mr. Birley in the suburb. Whangaparaoa Peninsula, north of central Auckland. “It’s no use at night.”
chance encounters
Despite all the challenges, photographers say the pursuit of bioluminescence pays off in part because the phenomenon is endlessly surprising.
On a clear night, Mr. Bain drove about 40 miles to a beach where he hoped to photograph the Milky Way. When he arrived, he saw not only a sky full of stars, but also a glowing coastline. “That was a special one to come across by accident,” he said.
Another time, Mr. Davison got out of his car on a beach with low expectations. It was raining and he assumed that would be a problem because heavy rain typically spoils a bioluminescence show.
But in this case, the rainfall was so gentle it had activated glowing algae over the ocean’s surface as far as he could see. So he grabbed his camera and started shooting.
“Unless you’re there, unless you record it, no one would believe – not even imagine – what you see,” said Mr. Davison. “That’s why I love making photos and videos of this. The best way to share what you’ve seen is through the power of an image.”
