What Is Milky Sea Effect? A Mysterious Glow In The Ocean

It was common sailor's lore that sometimes they got to areas where the sea was white and the lights were glowing below the ships. Between 1915 and 1993, about 235 times, the fishermen from ships claimed to have seen large areas of seawater appear to glow brightly at night, particularly in the northwestern Indian Ocean near to Somalia. It was claimed to be the largest bioluminescent area in the world, an area so immense that you can even see it from space, that remained unknown to science until 2005.

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Initially, the scientists took this matter very lightly, but when such news surfaced again and again, pictures were taken from the satellites, and they were surprised to see that it was absolutely true. Furthermore, they also revealed that the area of this glowing portion was equal to the US state of Connecticut. Scientists have named this phenomenon the "Milky Sea Effect", also called Mareel. It is said to be a rare form of marine bioluminescence where the ocean surface emits a broad, uniform, and steady white glow at night. 

Although what is this Milky Sea Effect actually, scientists are still finding out, but even today they have not found anything special in their hands. There are about two or three Milky Sea sightings annually worldwide, most of which originate in the waters of the northwestern Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia. Sometimes these conditions persist over an area of more than 1,00,000 km square on the sea surface for several days to weeks and move silently among the ocean currents. 

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In 1985, a research vessel in the Arabian Sea took water samples during the Milky Sea effect, and they concluded that the event was caused by the bacterium "Vibrio harveyi". In July 2015, when this phenomenon occurred in Alleppey, Kerala, the National Institute of Oceanography and Kerala Fisheries Department researched it and found that these glittering waves were the result of bioluminescent "Noctiluca scintillans". 

Therefore, the number of bacteria it would take to create a luminous sphere the size of Connecticut is almost immeasurable, that's about forty billion trillion bacteria. But sometimes their color was found to be white, sometimes blue, and even green, so many other scientists do not believe in the theory of bioluminescent in this regard. Well, let's see what they find in the future.