FOR decades, sailors have reported seeing glowing dolphins at night. These are not hallucinations caused by too many months at sea, researchers at a US Navy lab and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego can now confirm.
Scientists interested in how dolphins swim have always insisted that they don’t disturb the water enough to make luminescent plankton turn on their lights. But now researchers who photographed dolphins swimming in a plankton plume report that their bodies do take on a ghostly glow (Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 201, p 1447).
