The Maldivian night nature is not only about looking at the starry sky, across which stretches the silvery band of the majestic Milky Way. Surprisingly, it offers one amazingly and extremely photogenic show right on the beaches of practically every island. In some months of the year, the night beaches can literally light up with the bright turquoise light of glowing plankton.
Continue reading the sixth part of the series about gems of Maldivian sky, written by Petr Horálek
Just imagine – on a deep moonless night, you go to the beach again after dinner. This time not in the light of the Sun or twilight, but under the cover of a dark starry night. As you walk up to the beach, you see something unimaginably magical: The entire beach on the scattering of sand and gentle waves of the ocean glow with a flickering veil of turquoise light that intensifies as each wave hits the shore. As you step into this luminous enchantment, clouds of turquoise light surround your feet as well. When you step onto land again, your feet are still noticeably luminous. And when you decide to swim in that bluish glow – strikingly reminiscent of a scene from the movie Avatar (2009) – your swimming paces light up the water as if lighting up a phosphorescent substance over and over again. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful interactions with nocturnal nature – and it’s also offered in the Maldives.
What we witness – if lucky to see – is the Bioluminescent Plankton. Bioluminescence is often nicknamed “living light” and there are many types of it. Bioluminescence can be observed in insects; the lighting effects of fireflies are notorious. But they can also be observed in some mushrooms. The bioluminescence of plankton is probably one of the most beautiful cases of living light ever because it is very bright and very dynamic. It is caused by small creatures, known as bioluminescent dinoflagellates, which are the source of the light on the incoming waves with is peak of activity from December through February. But in addition, there are bioluminescent creatures in the deeper ocean, too.
Photo by: Petr Horálek
Why do they glow? These dinoflagellates use a chemical called luciferin to emit a bright blue light as a defense mechanism. Luciferin is a molecule that reacts in the presence of the enzyme luciferase to produce light. Once pressure (like a wave, a crash with an object like our legs) triggers a chemical reaction, a molecular fragment produces an excited light of a turquoise color. By the way, the name of the molecule comes from lucifer, which is simply Latin for light-bearer. The flashes of light produced by the dinoflagellates can disorient and confuse predators. Researchers determined the species Lingulodinium polyhedra uses its glow-in-the-dark abilities to scare off copepod grazers, the species’ primary predator.
The movement of the waves can also trigger this light emission, resulting in the mesmerizing sight of glowing waves washing ashore in the Maldives. I was lucky several times to witness this natural wonder. During my visits to Maldivian Islands, I had many opportunities. Mostly the plankton looked like a little blue sparkle in the calm water, so I only captured them separately with the night sky. But there were several truly unforgettable moments. Among the most amazing ones I remember especially three beautiful shows.
The first was on Soneva Fushi Island on 6 February 2023 very early in the morning. Originally, I went to capture the special upright moonset of a Full Moon near the equator that morning, while the beach below the Moon was totally covered by the glowing plankton. The image is just proof of the immersive beauty of such a moment!
Photo by: Petr Horálek
The second case to remember occurred on Thoddoo Island on 20 February 2023, where I spent several nights for astrophotography around that date. The western part of the island (sunset beach and a bit south) offers pretty nice views of the night sky and the plankton made the experience just so much more dramatic! While shooting the sky, I was walking the beach and enjoying my shining legs just before I decided to swim in the glowing lagoon too. Anyhow I moved in the water, water around me immediately started to glow. What a moment!
Photo by: Petr Horálek
Photo by: Petr Horálek
More of Biolumenscent Planton from February 2023 at Thoddoo Island.
Photo by: Petr Horálek
The best bioluminescent plankton experience so far, however, belongs to the night of 14 February 2023, when I was a visitor astronomer invited to Soneva Jani Island. That late evening, after 10pm, I was told the northern beach was just incredibly bright due to the bioluminescence. Equipped with my wide-angle lens on a mirrorless camera, I was speechless first moments after I came to the beach. It just felt otherworldly. Extraordinarily bright Plankton, which was easy to be captured even on a smartphone camera, covered the whole beach just below the rising Southern Cross constellation surrounded by the Milky Way. Both phenomena in one view, seemingly connect each other. I felt like in a Turquoise Wonderland. So I used my camera to capture it as well as possible. These views eventually appeared even like NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day or BBC’s Astrophotographer of the Year 2024. Such unique the views were!
Incredibly majestic views of the Bioluminescent Plankton on 14 February 2023 on Soneva Jani Island created a view like being in a turquoise wonderland.
Photo by: Petr Horálek
More photos: https://www.petrhoralek.com/?p=23528
Of what was mentioned before, the Bioluminescent Plankton can be very well observable from Maldives. The best view is on a beach in the shade of any artificial lights, causing light pollution. Unfortunately, not all Maldivian islands are doing so well, on many of them they use light where it is not needed (lights shine with great intensity up into the sky, and bright ball lights are often used instead of directional lights that would only shine down to the ground). Artificial lights can not only make the show less visible but also ruin the main purpose of bioluminescence as well—to scare off the predators. Moreover, climate change with artificial changes in ocean circulation due to the not-nature-friendly construction of new resorts, can cause significant changes to the natural life of the plankton too.
Although Vaadhoo Island in Raa Atoll is the most well-known spot, bioluminescent plankton can also be viewed on one of the 1200 other islands. One of the islands where you can still see the beauty of the night sky is, for example, Thoddoo, especially its sunset beach.
If the Maldivian government and the owners of the accommodation centers would come up with a plan to effectively reduce light pollution by installing the right and nature-friendly lamps (which is very well described by International Dark Sky Association), it would also become a truly worldly unique paradise for enjoying the gems of the night nature, including the Bioluminescent Plankton!
Something about the author and photographer of this post
PETR HORÁLEK was born in 1986 in Pardubice, Czech Republic. He studied Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics at Masaryk University Brno (graduated in 2011) and Theoretical Physics in Silesian University of Opava (graduated in 2022). He worked briefly as an observer of fireballs at the Department for Interplanetary Matter of the Astronomical Institute of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, now he is astrophotographer and popularizer of astronomy, awarded also by NASA. From 2011, he fell in love with astrophotography and decided to take a year-long trip around the world to improve his skills in that field. As citizen of a light-polluted Czech Republic, he travels the world for naturally dark places in show people in polluted cities what are they missing (not only) above their heads. A long route through the Canary Islands, Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and South Africa brought him in the end into the heart of the Atacama Desert at ESO’s La Silla and Paranal Observatory in 2015 (when he became the ESO Photo Ambassador), later in NOIRLab observatories (as NOIRLab Photo Envoy) and, of course, the Maldivian Islands in 2019. Petr specialises in photographing rare night-sky phenomena. His images capture unique moments, which he calls “pearls of astronomy”, that add to the immeasurable beauty of a dark starry sky. Something, he thinks that everyone should see at some point in their lives.
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