Deep Ocean

Glowing is the normal condition down there. When researchers at MBARI counted the animals from the surface to four thousand metres in Monterey Bay, three quarters of them made their own light. In the largest habitat on the planet, producing light is ordinary and going dark is the specialisation.

It is the only signal available. With no sunlight to speak of, light does the work that colour, sound and scent do elsewhere: a lure hung in front of a mouth, a flash to startle something that has taken hold of you, a glow along the belly tuned to match the faint light from above so that nothing underneath sees a silhouette. Some animals, caught by a predator, light up violently to attract a larger predator to the fight.

A good deal of it is borrowed. The reaction needs a compound called luciferin, and many animals cannot make their own, so they either eat it or keep a colony of luminous bacteria in an organ built to house them. A lantern fish is not entirely the source of its own lantern.

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