Ever walk a beach late at night and spot a tiny but bright blue iridescent glow that fades and brighten real slowly (near the water line on moist sand)?
If you have and you’ve picked it up, you see nothing more than a bright blue spot. Turn on a light and it really looks like a little blurry whitish blob! What could it be, so tiny, yet so bright?!
Under a microscope the mysterious little blue spot looks like something from a sci-fi horror film, about to spawn out of an egg-case. It looks like a crustacean in a molluscan bubble shell, which is the best way I can describe it.
What the little deep blue spot from the deep blue is, is a bioluminescent marine ostracod! Here are some neat images of ostracods from Australian waters from Museum Victoria.
Below is an image of a biolouminesce marine ostracod from Levera beach, Grenada, West Indies (18-April-2008).
