The beautiful, electric blue glowing water can be tough to track in nature – usually lighting up far past bedtime and elusively moving from beach to beach with ocean currents.
Other times, the bioluminescent waves don’t show up at all, leaving hopeful people standing on the beach waiting all night in anticipation, only to leave disappointed.
But the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach will be hosting a gathering on Friday, Feb. 23, that will allow people who have been fascinated by the phenomenon to get up close to the neon waters.
The Night Dive event – part of a series for which the aquarium transforms into an adults-only venue complete with cocktails and music – will put the electric-blue water in the spotlight with several displays where people can shake up the algae to make it glow or put their hands into water to make it light up.
Patrick Coyne, a Torrance photographer who documents bioluminescence across Southern California, chasing it from the South Bay to San Diego and beyond, approached the aquarium with the “bio night” idea.
Coyne will be showcasing photos and videos taken over hundreds of hours since 2020, the most recent this week in Newport Beach and off San Diego’s coast.
He’s documented thousands of glowing waves and creatures frolicking in the neon blue water, everything from dolphins to ducks to sand crabs moving the phytoplankton to make it glow.
“For the people who haven’t seen it, this is their chance to get up close and personal with it, or to relive the moments they’ve had with it in the wild,” Coyne said. “It’s going to be really, really cool.”
PyroFarms, a Carlsbad-based company, will be on hand to showcase the bioluminescent phytoplankton, a living organism that produces light when agitated.
Dean Sauer, founder of PyroFarms, is a scientist who collected a sample near the Scripps Institution of Oceanography about 10 years ago and started growing the algae in a lab setting.
The company sells…
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