What in the world...flourescent?

[surfingdude]

Put corals in the first time...all opened up nicely...and just turned out white lights...darn things are vibrant flourescent, I mean glow in the dark brilliant! Awesome!

 

[ClownMan727]

Well you're hooked! Welcome to the club.

 

[Ron Reefman]

surfingdude, as I understand it (and I'm no expert) it's a biochemical reaction in the pigments of the coral. Kind of like bioluminescence but then not the same. Some, not all, pigments take in the high energy, short wavelength blue, violet and even some UV light. They then use some of that energy to actually make light fluoresce. If you pay attention, you'll notice that there are greens, yellows, oranges and reds that fluoresce, but there isn't any blue because they have to use some of the light energy to fluoresce. So there isn't enough energy left for them to fluoresce blue which is high energy, they only do wavelengths that are longer and lower energy.

It's one of the reasons that led fixtures with blue channels have become so popular. Plus the fact that the corals use blue wavelengths to mdo photosynthesis (or their zooxanthellae does).

 

[surfingdude]

thanks ron...i was very suprised to see such color...the green star polyp, on its own rock, is just amazing with the blue, the only one that didnt glow was my long tentacle toadstool leather. Iam itching to get more but I guess i better wait.

 

[MondoBongo]

this is one of my favorite things that corals do. it's called "biofluorescence" and as Ron noted it is distinct from bioluminescence in that the corals are not producing their own light, but rather reflecting certain wavelengths to allow them to have that eerie glow.

http://www.nightsea.com/sfa-sharing/coral-fluorescence-vs-excitation-wavelength/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150629-glowing-fluorescent-corals-science/

there's also some cool stuff you can do with certain types of yellow bypass filters to really make them pop when viewing. the yellow filter helps mute certain wavelengths and highlight details that would otherwise be hard to see.

http://johnrander.chez-alice.fr/fluorescence_en.html

from my understanding, most of this glow is produced using a protein called Green fluorescent protein, or GFP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein

this stuff has actually been extracted and used in all sorts of lab and medical applications to mark certain kinds of cells or processes, and allow for easier viewing.

Nova actually did an excellent program on this not too long ago:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/creatures-light.html

 

[mcgyvr]

Bioluminescent turtle too..
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...luorescence-coral-reef-ocean-animals-science/

 

[surfingdude]

In my younger and dumber years, we would surf at night...when we would paddle out, the ocean lit up when agitated. Pretty cool stuff.