the first fish that we found to be
biofluorescent was a small eel and it
was in night time were diving off of the
Bloody Bay wall in on a little Cayman
Island in the process of finding it we
started to find wait a minute here’s
another fish that’s fluorescent here’s
another fish here’s a stingray that was
also fluorescent so this just sent us
off being like wait a second this isn’t
exactly a rare occurrence then we went
to the the Solomon Islands in the summer
of 2012 and that’s that’s where we found
the core of our fluorescent fish this is
one of the places with the Coral
Triangle which has some of the most
abundant marine diversity on the planet
we started to see that this is this is
something that extends beyond the bony
fish and it goes into the car delicious
fish into the Rays maybe it’ll also be
in sharks so we started to go down when
we were in the Solomon Islands we were
trying to get the Sharks close enough
that we could film them and we also went
to a series of aquariums and it turns
out that these some of the smaller
sharks the the cat sharks are
brilliantly fluorescent as bright as
some of the brightest fish as bright as
the corals when you see the images when
you see it’s all over it’s in their eyes
it’s um it’s down their skin this is
making me think that it’s something
that’s important physiologically for
this animal and we at this moment we do
not know what the function is so in
order to see the phenomena
biofluorescence we use scientific
filters and we created the same pure
blue a very tight notch blue filter and
then that is the light that’s always
bathing these animals they live in a
blue world the world is blue all the
time and we did this we recreate the
blue light but then when we film it we
don’t want to see the blue light we just
want to see the light that’s getting
absorbed by these animals and is coming
back off so we have a yellow filter that
we put in front of our camera lens and
that only allows us to see the
fluorescence the Reds the greens that
are coming off the animal
so what’s next
can the fish see this is this playing a
role in their behavior I’m really
interested at the protein level we
identified over 180 species in the
single paper that there’s opened up more
questions some that were we’re really
excited to start digging into I just
find this real serenity and beauty to
being in the reef at night and now when
we add on this kind of fluorescent layer
it’s like being on another planet you
know you’re on some surreal Martian
landscape
biofluorescent was a small eel and it
was in night time were diving off of the
Bloody Bay wall in on a little Cayman
Island in the process of finding it we
started to find wait a minute here’s
another fish that’s fluorescent here’s
another fish here’s a stingray that was
also fluorescent so this just sent us
off being like wait a second this isn’t
exactly a rare occurrence then we went
to the the Solomon Islands in the summer
of 2012 and that’s that’s where we found
the core of our fluorescent fish this is
one of the places with the Coral
Triangle which has some of the most
abundant marine diversity on the planet
we started to see that this is this is
something that extends beyond the bony
fish and it goes into the car delicious
fish into the Rays maybe it’ll also be
in sharks so we started to go down when
we were in the Solomon Islands we were
trying to get the Sharks close enough
that we could film them and we also went
to a series of aquariums and it turns
out that these some of the smaller
sharks the the cat sharks are
brilliantly fluorescent as bright as
some of the brightest fish as bright as
the corals when you see the images when
you see it’s all over it’s in their eyes
it’s um it’s down their skin this is
making me think that it’s something
that’s important physiologically for
this animal and we at this moment we do
not know what the function is so in
order to see the phenomena
biofluorescence we use scientific
filters and we created the same pure
blue a very tight notch blue filter and
then that is the light that’s always
bathing these animals they live in a
blue world the world is blue all the
time and we did this we recreate the
blue light but then when we film it we
don’t want to see the blue light we just
want to see the light that’s getting
absorbed by these animals and is coming
back off so we have a yellow filter that
we put in front of our camera lens and
that only allows us to see the
fluorescence the Reds the greens that
are coming off the animal
so what’s next
can the fish see this is this playing a
role in their behavior I’m really
interested at the protein level we
identified over 180 species in the
single paper that there’s opened up more
questions some that were we’re really
excited to start digging into I just
find this real serenity and beauty to
being in the reef at night and now when
we add on this kind of fluorescent layer
it’s like being on another planet you
know you’re on some surreal Martian
landscape
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