Bioluminescent algae began lighting up Southern California beaches earlier this month and it’s safe to say the novelty of it has never really worm off. While it’s not nearly the viral craze that took over in 2020, plenty of people are still going out of their way to see the neon blue ocean in person when day turns to night, and one videographer might have captured the coolest scenes yet in Orange County last week.
The footage shows a pod of dolphins swimming next to a boat, chasing fish in what looks more like something out of Avatar than a random evening off the California coast.
“This video is special because obviously the dolphins are glowing but they’re chasing around the fish which are also glowing,” says photographer and videographer Patrick Coyne. “Words can’t express how stoked I am to see this again in California and I feel so lucky to be able to film it.”
Coyne’s seized the opportunity to capture a lot of nights like this on camera, but this particular image was one he’d had in his sights since the algae blooms showed up in 2020.
“Filming bioluminescence alone is extremely difficult to do,” he says. “Photographing dolphins swimming in bio from the bow of a moving boat makes it even harder. I attempted photos like this in 2020 and after many failed attempts I was able to capture this again.”
The whole phenomenon is not as rare as you might imagine. Most deep sea marine life carry the luciferin chemical that creates a bioluminescent glow and use that glow as a means to hunt. The glowing waves we see are caused by plankton called dinoflagellates, which turn the ocean red during the day (also called a red tide), but emit a blue flash when activated at night. Once there are more than 100,000 algae cells per liter of water the plankton then create a glow — something that happens more often when it’s hot and dry.
