This Beautiful Photo Spells Doom For The Sea

This Beautiful Photo Spells Doom For The Sea

Photo: This photo looks innocent enough: a simple, breathtakingly beautiful long-exposure shot of algae along the Hong Kong shoreline. But under the surface, the blue luminescence, called “Sea Sparkle”, is bad news for the ocean.

Noctiluca scintillans algal bloom, as Sea Sparkle is more correctly known, is caused by farm pollution that can be seriously bad news for marine life. Noctiluca feeds off the nitrogen and phosphorus run-off from industry, causing a high concentration around some shorelines. The bad news is that ammonia is a by-product of the Noctiluca growth, and high concentrations of ammonia is thought to (unsurprisingly) disturb marine life that lives in the area.

Image credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.