N Haidu reporter Chen Ming
Haidu News On a sunny night, the south wind, the rising tide, under the impetus of the waves, the "blue tears" floating in the bay are extremely gorgeous, beautiful as a dream... Recently, Pingtan's "blue tears" have brushed the screen in the WeChat circle of friends. Now, as many people know, "Blue Tears" is divided into sea fireflies and luminous algae versions. So, do you know what a gorgeous sea firefly looks like? Dr. Zeng Qianhui, an expert in marine life, "caught" sea fireflies alive and used a microscope to unveil their mysteries.
The "blue tears" of seaflies on the beach are like blooming flowers
The feet of the sea fireflies resemble beards
Sea fireflies holding eggs
The black sand inside the sea fireflies in the picture may have been swallowed by surprise when it was caught
Squatting for many nights without results, unexpectedly encountering "blue tears"
Ms. Zeng is a doctoral candidate at the Third Institute of Oceanography of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and for a long time, she has not seen the "blue tears" with her own eyes, "In order to be able to witness this beautiful scenery for a long time, she married into Pingtan and became the daughter-in-law of Pingtan." Ms. Zeng jokingly told reporters.
Recently, she used the holiday to return to her in-laws' house and squatted on the beach every night waiting for "blue tears". Ms. Zeng said: "I only saw a few waves lapping together to flash a faint blue light, the camera can shoot it, but the mobile phone is not very good." ”
Later, after picking up a barnacles (an arthropod attached to a rock by the sea), Ms. Zeng needed to fetch seawater to raise it. It was also a coincidence that one night, when she went to fetch the seawater, she stepped into the beach, only to see a large area of blue light immediately around her, and she immediately realized: I met the "blue tears"!
It has multiple legs and looks like a beard at first glance
After the viewing, with curiosity, Ms. Zeng had the idea of sampling. As the waves slapped the "blue tears" on the beach, she reached out and grabbed a small handful of sand and saw the life-breathing "blue tears" hidden in it glowing on the palm of her hand.
She "caught" some "blue tears" alive with a plastic box she carried with her. But once they leave the seawater, the sea fireflies are easy to die, and after returning home, Ms. Zeng immediately put them into a certain concentration of ethanol and "fixed" them to prevent rot. She then took the sample back to the research institute in Xiamen, placed it under a microscope, and used her camera to take a picture of the enlarged sea fireflies.
The reporter saw from the photos transmitted by Ms. Zeng that the enlarged sea firefly looks a bit like a tick, but it has multiple legs, and it is very long, several times the length of the body, and it looks a bit like a beard from a distance. What surprised the reporter even more was that one of the photos also took the sea fireflies holding eggs: the ovulations of eggs, conceived in the belly of the sea fireflies.
The sea fireflies are about 3 mm long and visible to the naked eye
Ms. Zeng said that "blue tears" is a strange bioluminescent phenomenon in nature, which is basically composed of plankton in the sea, which will emit a brief fluorescence after being stimulated by the outside world, which can be said to be a short-lived beauty. These are all necessary to appear under the conditions of water temperature, weather, high tide, wind direction and other comprehensive factors. What she "caught alive" in Pingtan was the sea firefly version of "Blue Tears", which had a sense of solidity between her fingers, was visible to the naked eye, and was 2 to 3 mm in size.
She said that sea fireflies have complex feeding habits and can feed on live animals, animal carcasses, phytoplankton and other suspended organic matter in water. Sea fireflies are sexually reproducible, females lay eggs after mating, and fertilized eggs can be laid directly in water or attached to other objects. After hatching, the fertilized egg will first form an arthropod, then undergo several molts, increase the number of appendages (that is, legs), and gradually become adult. When the sea fireflies are stimulated by the outside world, the body will excrete fluorescein and luciferase, and when these two substances come into contact with water, luciferase will catalyze the luminescence of fluorescein and emit light blue light in the reaction. Therefore, on the beach where there are many sea fireflies, stepping on them will stimulate them to emit blue light.
EDIT: No surprise