Products Engineering Enviro.
Bioluminescence is extremely common in the oceans.
Because bioluminescence is so common, it can serve as a useful tool for mapping organism distribution patterns. In situ measurements of downwelling light are being collected simultaneously with visual and bioluminescence transects from the submersible to determine how animal distribution patterns are being affected by changes in the downwelling light field. Vertical migrations are the most massive animal migration patterns on the planet and they occur every night as hundreds of thousands of organisms leave the deeper depths and migrate up into the food-rich surface waters to feed under cover of darkness. Many of the animals undertaking these migrations are the source of food for a large number of commercially important fish species, and are critical to their survival. To date, the spectral sensitivities of a 25 species of midwater crustaceans have been measured via electrophysiological methods.