Why did the whole ocean glow white? The real story of the milky sea

In 1854 a captain wrote that the whole ocean looked like a plain covered with snow. The 'milky seas' sailors reported for centuries turn out to be luminous bacteria that light up together once there are enough of them, and satellites confirmed them in 1995 and 2019.

• 1985, Arabian Sea: the only direct sample found luminous bacteria (Vibrio harveyi)
• 1995, off Somalia: about 15,400 km² seen by satellite
• 2019, south of Java: about 100,000 km² (Iceland-sized) glowed for over a month

Sources: NASA Earth Observatory; Miller et al., PNAS (2005, 2022); Scientific Reports (2021)
Note: scenes are AI-generated recreations.

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