Sitting on a dock in Isla Morada, watching the stars come out as dusk turned into night, when suddenly a bright green luminescence appeared in the water. At first I thought it must be a glowing jellyfish. Then more appeared, and looking more closely I saw each was a brightly glowing wriggling worm, a couple of inches long, creating around it a luminescent pool about a foot across. They were there for a minute then vanished. Altogether forty or so must have suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly disappeared. Within minutes the show was over.<\/p>\n
Subsequent research revealed I had just seen the mating ritual of the bearded fireworm. It happens on the third quarter of the moon in Spring, fifty-six minutes after sunset. The females come out of the mud, swim up to the surface and put on this spectacle, attracting the males up to them. <\/p>\n
But how come such exact timing, I wondered? At first I must I thought be triggered by the degree of darkness reached 56 minutes after sunset, on a day when there is no full moon. But a day or two after the full moon, the sky would be that dark. Why did it not happen till the third quarter – and this was exactly on the third quarter, seven days after the full moon. <\/p>\n
I was left in wonder. One of those fascinating ways life on Earth is linked to the cycles of the moon – and so precisely. <\/p>\n
And my own timing was perfect too. Had I not stayed on the dock till it got dark, I would not have seen them. Had it been en another day, I would not have seen them. Perhaps this is the only time in my life I will be privileged to witness this magic luminescent dance. But I shall be eternally grateful for having done so. (Or maybe I will return on the third quarter of the April full moon next year.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sitting on a dock in Isla Morada, watching the stars come out as dusk turned into night, when suddenly a bright green luminescence appeared in the water. At first I thought it must be a glowing jellyfish. Then more appeared, and looking more closely I saw each was a brightly glowing wriggling worm, a couple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterrussell.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}