Boat tours have launched to tap into the interest right now in seeing the bioluminescence phenomenon that has been lighting up the ocean at night along the coast.
Seats sold out quickly the first night, Sunday, Sept. 10, when the Newport Coastal Adventure set out to sea in search of glowing wildlife. Trips are planned for upcoming days and will run for as long as the red tide sticks around, organizers said, but it’s unknown exactly how long that will be.
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The algae blooms – created by a dinoflagellate that looks reddish during the day but glows at night when the water is agitated – is highly unpredictable, though the red tide has become more widespread across the Orange County coastline in recent days.
Newport Coastal Adventure owner and captain Ryan Lawler said he had held off on holding night tours because of recent strong winds and sporadic sightings that made the red tide tough to track.
But he decided to give it a shot with ocean conditions cleaning up and algae blooming from Sunset Beach to San Clemente over the weekend.
In 2020, when there was a super bloom that lasted months, Lawler took out a few friends and photographers on private night charters who documented glowing dolphins frolicking in the sea, a sight they hoped to score once again.
And they did. Glowing dolphins streaking across the ocean for his second charter of Sunday night, their sleek bodies lighting up as they darted past the boat searching for fish, the smaller prey also illuminated by the bioluminescence that makes the ocean turn an electric blue hue.
But there’s no way to promise glowing dolphins, and passengers aboard his first charter that night watched the wake from the boat glow and some fish lighting up the sea.
They came across the pod of common dolphins closer to midnight, just as they were headed back to Newport Harbor from Laguna Beach.
“They are pretty hard to find in the daytime, let alone night time,” Lawler said. “We did find a great pod of dolphins, it was so cool, there were dozens of them.”
He described the experience like being on Space Mountain, where shapes are hard to make out, he said. “You see this glowing streak coming straight at you, it’s like a missile.”
The pod they encountered chased a big school of fish, which also lit up under the ocean surface.
“There’s this burst of light, like an explosion,” he described.
Torrance photographer Patrick Coyne, who has spent hundreds of hours photographing the bioluminescence since 2020, called the experience “phenomenal.”
The first time he and fellow nature photographer Mark Girardeau documented the glowing dolphins during Lawyer’s private trip in 2020, the video went viral and was shown around the world – a light moment as people were grappling with the pandemic.
“The world needed something positive and beautiful and Mother Nature delivered,” Coyne said. “We were chasing that feeling again. Three years later, we’re getting good ‘bio’ off the coast and we did it again.”
The boats filled up within minutes of Coyne and Girardeau, who runs the site Orange County Outdoors, announcing the tours, with a waitlist of hundreds of people quickly growing. The demand was so strong, Davey’s Locker and Newport Landing added larger boats to hold more people for tours scheduled on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12.
“It’s all on the mercy of the wind and currents,” Lawler said of the chances of encounter the bioluminescence. “We’re just appreciating it for what it is, which is a nice surprise. We’ll see how long it lasts, if it continues, we’ll continue to offer this fun opportunity.”
While it’s fun to look at, it’s best to stay out of the glowing water because it can cause itchy skin or irritations and also has a funky, musty smell. Others have said it causes respiratory issues, though no study has been released tracking adverse reactions.
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If you do go to the beach to see the phenomenon, be mindful of nearby communities during late-night hours.
At some beaches, police are patrolling and kicking people off the sand after curfew as crowds turn out to see the phenomenon, Coyne said.
“For me, the more people who get to see it the better, in my opinion,” he said. “This is a pretty big event. This is probably the biggest one since 2020. I’ve gone out tons of times and seen it, but I really can’t predict it, I have no idea. Mother Nature plays by her own rules.”
Source: Orange County Register
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