Boat tours have launched to tap into the interest right now in seeing the bioluminescence phenomenon that has been lighting up the ocean at night along the coast.
Seats sold out quickly the first night, Sunday, Sept. 10, when the Newport Coastal Adventure set out to sea in search of glowing wildlife. Trips are planned for upcoming days and will run for as long as the red tide sticks around, organizers said, but it’s unknown exactly how long that will be.
The algae blooms – created by a dinoflagellate that looks reddish during the day but glows at night when the water is agitated – is highly unpredictable, though the red tide has become more widespread across the Orange County coastline in recent days.
Newport Coastal Adventure owner and captain Ryan Lawler said he had held off on holding night tours because of recent strong winds and sporadic sightings that made the red tide tough to track.
But he decided to give it a shot with ocean conditions cleaning up and algae blooming from Sunset Beach to San Clemente over the weekend.
In 2020, when there was a super bloom that lasted months, Lawler took out a few friends and photographers on private night charters who documented glowing dolphins frolicking in the sea, a sight they hoped to score once again.
And they did. Glowing dolphins streaking across the ocean for his second charter of Sunday night, their sleek bodies lighting up as they darted past the boat searching for fish, the smaller prey also illuminated by the bioluminescence that makes the ocean turn an electric blue hue.
But there’s no way to promise glowing dolphins, and passengers aboard his first charter that night watched the wake from the boat glow and some fish lighting up the sea.
They came across the pod of common dolphins closer to midnight, just as they were headed back to Newport Harbor from Laguna Beach.
“They are pretty hard to find in the daytime, let alone night time,” Lawler said. “We did find a great pod of…
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