Crazy Good From Just Plain Crazy

As otherworldly as this landscape appears, it was photographed by Phil Hart on the shores of Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia, Earth. For a few summer months in 2008/09, disappointingly terrestrial creatures called Noctiluca scintillans—bioluminescent algae—created a bright fairy-land where the shores glow with eerie turquoise and the water reacts with flashes and sparkles when touched. View his Full Gallery to see more fascinating images of this phenomenon.

No sublime phosphorescent microbes inhabit our bodies of water in central Pennsylvania. I have never seen the shores of Whipple Dam lapping with electric blue waves. I have never witnessed Spring Creek flowing with fireworks. No doubt it would be a thing to behold. Though, I'm not sure if I would pray to receive this delight. The bioluminescence photographed in 2008/09 was extraordinary in its brightness, but it arose out of extraordinary disaster.

In December 2006, brush fires covered over a million hectares of land around the rivers and streams that feed the Gippsland lakes. Come winter, severe rains flooded Gippsland in a "1 in 100-year" flood, washing nutrients from the holocaust forests into the lakes, altering the chemistry of the lakes and causing blue-green algae (frequently toxic) to bloom throughout the lakes that summer. Following so much misfortune, lake-area inhabitants wondered what new tragedy the next summer would hold.

But instead of more toxic cyanobacteria, the lakes were visited by Noctiluca scintillans, a bioluminescent alga that feeds on the other numerous algae, causing the lakes to dance with the splendor of stars.

Few wonders come without a price. The larvae of lightingbugs cower in muddy waters and eat nothing but snails for months before they are permitted to ascend to write the sky with glowing letters. Sparkling algae swarm to feed on the products of a series of unprecedented natural disasters. Would that I could remember this when I am the burned-out forest or the flooded land! Remember to look ahead, over the charred remains and the deluge to see brilliant glow of the next spectacle God has prepared.

Image by Phil Hart, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license. Background information likewise provided by Phil Hart.