STRANGE LIGHTS ON THE SEA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20991, 2 April 1930, Page 12

STRANGE LIGHTS ON THE SEA

. _ — FISHES’ POWER OF ILLUMINATION. An odd spectacle was reported in the Gulf of Martaban recently by the captain of a British India steamer, says the New York Times. The weather was serene overhead when the vessel entered an area bubbling with little lights which broke when they reached the surface of the water. Some of the bubble? went wild, and zig-zagged like flashes of submarine lightning. Then, as if by command, they were marshalled into curving beams of light, 30ft across, and radiated like streamers from an unseen maypole miles away. The skipper concluded from his unwavering compass needle that the phenomenon was dae to no electrical storm, but to some volcanic ; disturbance beneath the sea. 1 One Commander Harris told in 1880 of a milky white circle of light near the Malabar coast which rolled toward him over the Face of the water until his ship was completely enveloped. While the ship was in its luminous embrace inflight appeared to reach from one end of the horizon to the other. Apparently the water was studded with patches of inanimate matter suddenly illuminated as if they were a medium for electro-mag-netic. currents. The waves rolled towards the ship and swept into the distance, leaving the vessel again in darkness. There have been rainstorms which left red stains like drops of blood to terrify the superstitious and stir bad consciences to quick repentance. Showers have fallen in France wherein the raindrops gleamed like bits of red hot metal, and running down a man's sleeve left a gilt train behind them. Blue phosphorescent snows are reported to have crowned the, peaks of Switzerland. Monte Blanc especially, whose soft blue.^ap-of .light after sundown has been brilliant enough for photographers to record., . The tropical seas are alive with phosphorescent organisms. At night the stem of a boat cuts a silvery path while luminous drops of water fall from oar's or from hands trailing in the water. There are fishes of the sea, like the Girdle of Venus, whose fringed ribbon of light winds and unwinds through the ocean depths. Some have portholes, others carry their lights at the end of waving “ whip lashes.” There are little white lights in the waves of Massachusetts that splash up on the rocks, and even bn Long Island Sound, oil-covered though it be, one finds phosphorescent organism. Fireflies dance over the country with their miraculous gold lights, hunting their dinners by lamplight. In many parts of the world tales are told of the will-o'-the-wisp which hovers over marshy lowlands, always retreating as you attempt to approach it. A company of American travellers in the Holy Land reported that one of these strange sprites followed them all through the Valley of Mount Ephraim, sometimes enveloping them in a pale greenish glow, then shrinking to a point and darting up a neighbouring hillside.