Nie Huang's strange works in "Sea Fault Map" have been shown to you a lot in the previous push.
But if you choose the "most bizarre painting in "Sea Fault Map", the following painting will definitely rank in the top three.
Image from "Sea Fault Map"
First of all, the name of this painting is the longest of all the paintings in the book, called "Crab Turtle Turtle Snail Clam Clam Fish Shrimp Negative Fire"...
How many people have successfully finished reading this name? Please raise your hand.
The various marine creatures in the painting have a flame burning on their backs, and this fire will not be extinguished in the sea.
Did they provoke some kind of divine fire?
For every fire a fisherman takes, he gets a crab
Nie Huang explained: "There is a small fish and shrimp in Fujian, and there is light like a firefly in the dark night. And the South Sea Crab (hòu) crab, etc., at night on the beach, there is a fire. For every fire a fisherman takes, he receives a crab genus. There is really fire in the sea. Qu Weng Shan "New Language" Cloud: Nocturnal dialing in the sea, then sparks spray. Therefore, Yuan Weizhi sent a guest to Youling Temple, there is a sentence of 'Dawn ChaoXia Eyelid, Sea Fire Night Burning'. ”
Most of this passage was actually copied from another book. Which book? It is that "Qu Weng Shan "New Language", its full name is "Guangdong New Language", the author Qu Dajun, the character Weng Shan, the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, Kangxi died in the thirty-fifth year. The Sea Mistake Map was written in the 37th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, so Qu Dajun and Nie Huang were of the same era.
Cantonese New Language
Qu Dajun participated in the anti-Qing activities of Zheng Chenggong and Wu Sangui in his early years, and after his failure, he concentrated on studying Guangdong Fangwu and wrote "Guangdong New Language", which recorded a large amount of geographical, biological and cultural information about Guangdong.
When introducing the creature "horseshoe crab", Qu Dajun mentioned the luminescence of these sea creatures.
Horseshoe crabs with blue blood (containing copper ions).
Image courtesy of wikipedia
According to Qu Dajun, on the beach at night, all kinds of small creatures will emit a fluorescent light, and fishermen can catch sea goods by rushing to the sea at night and running to the light. And rowing in the sea at night, the oars will also make the sea water "spark spray".
Is this true?
Fluorescent sea and blue tears
It's true.
This is the phenomenon of bioluminescence in the sea. Judging from Nie Huang's almost full copy of the Guangdong Xinyu, he had not seen this phenomenon with his own eyes, so the painting was more exaggerated. In fact, under real circumstances, creatures will only emit a faint blue or green light, and will not produce flames.
Let's first talk about "nocturnal travel in the sea, then sparks spray". There will be sparks when the beams are dialed, indicating that the sea water will glow when it is disturbed. In Dalian, Zhoushan and other places in China, there will be a seasonal spectacle, some seas will become "fluorescent seas" at night, as long as the waves crash, or oars, hands to touch the water, the sea will emit blue light. This is because there is a tiny dusty luminous algae in the water, which emits a blue fluorescence when stimulated.
On May 12, 2018, a fluorescent sea appeared in Dalian. The waves hit the edges of the reef with the strongest impacts, and the glow is the most pronounced.
The light of luminous algae sometimes turns blue and sometimes turns green.
I once witnessed it once in Rizhao, Shandong. It was a college graduation trip, and I walked alone to the beach at night. There was no one, no lights, and I looked at the dark sea, and suddenly found that every time a big wave appeared in the distance, a green light appeared from the wave, as if a monster was about to be drilled. Although I knew it was luminous algae, seeing this spectacle alone late at night was still sweating straight, which was a primitive sense of oppression. Hurry back and ask the students to come out to see together, and the mood will calm down.
Luminous algae
Although luminous algae is beautiful at night, it is a different scene during the day. In the sea where it gathers in large quantities, the water surface will turn red, the so-called "red tide". Red tides often occur when water quality is polluted and eutrophicated, which can cause the disaster of suffocation of fish and shrimp. Toxins produced by corpses accumulate in shellfish.
When the red tide breaks out, the coastal areas will issue warnings for citizens to eat shellfish carefully. Therefore, the fluorescent sea caused by luminous algae may not be romantic.
Red tides that once appeared in the eastern waters of Shenzhen. When the luminous algae are eutrophicated in water (commonly known as "water too fat"), they will multiply in large quantities and form red tides.
Pingtan, Fujian is also a famous viewing place for the fluorescent sea.
In addition to luminous algae, there is also a similar spectacle: "blue tears". At night, the seashore is also a blue light, but a closer look reveals that the light is a small oval creature in the water, much larger than the luminous algae, the size of a sesame seed. They are arthropod phylum, mesomorphic seaflies.
The sea fireflies collected in Pingtan, Fujian Province, are arthropods the size of sesame seeds
Ms. Zeng Qianhui, who does cetacean research at Xiamen University, went to Pingtan to collect samples of sea fireflies.
She told me that sea fireflies also emit light after being stimulated, but unlike luminous algae, sea fireflies continue to shine for a long time after the stimulation stops. Walking on the beach covered with seaflies will leave a string of blue-light footprints.
The fluorescent sea of VAADHOO Island in the Maldives is lit up with the starry sky. There are obvious luminous particles in the water, and they continue to glow on the beach, possibly sea fireflies.
Active luminescence? Reluctantly glowing?
The problem of seawater luminescence is solved, so what is the "negative fire" of various sea creatures?
Creatures such as horseshoe crabs, crabs, and turtles have not been found to emit light. It may be that when they are moving along the coast, they disturb the luminous algae in the seawater, so that the light around the body is emitted. The fishermen of the Qing Dynasty caught them unluckily based on these lights.
Other shrimp will be infected by luminescent bacteria. For example, fishermen who cultivate sea shrimp should pay attention to a kind of Vibrio luminescent bacteria. Once it enters the shrimp, the shrimp glows and dies soon after. I have also found similar situations in fresh water. Once, I bought a batch of serrated new rice shrimp (i.e., the "small river shrimp" and "black shell shrimp" commonly found in streams) and raised them in aquatic weed tanks to play with. When I went to the toilet in the middle of the night, I found that several shrimp actually emitted blue light all over their bodies. And these few died a few days later, which should be infected with some kind of freshwater glowing bacteria.
Of the sawtooth new rice shrimp I bought, a few were fluorescent. Placed on the table at night, you can reflect the reflection.
Except for these cases of forced luminescence, the rest are actively emitting light.
There is a species of firefly squid in the Sea of Japan that gathers and mates in Toyama Bay, Japan every spring to form a chic fluorescent beach. Their 4th pair of brachiopod tips have large light emitters that attract prey. The whole body is also covered with small light emitters, which can hide yourself in the dappled waves and avoid predators.
The firefly squid is covered with light emitters, and it will glow in the dark
There is a common class of small fish near the shore: the mackerel (bī) fish, some of which have a symbiotic mullet glowing bacillus in the body, which emits light in the belly of the fish, providing camouflage for the mullet, which can also be used as a distinguishing feature between male and female.
The krill that blue whales love to eat are also famous for their luminous light. Some krill will also throw out the glowing parts when they encounter danger to divert the attention of predators.
The "phosphorus" in the name of the krill refers to the light that can emit phosphorus fire
Australia also has a yellow flat shaft snail, the shell near the opening can emit light, and this beam of light can be evenly scattered, so that the entire shell emits green light. When the enemy attacks it, the snail shell will flash rapidly, which seems to be a way to resist the enemy.
As for the glowing jellyfish and deep-sea fish, everyone should have seen it in the documentary, so I won't introduce it.
Yellow flat shaft snail glowing green
Image credit: ziare.com
Why glow?
Nie Huang did not explain the reason for these bioluminescence.
But Qu Dajun explained it in the Guangdong Xinyu with the five elements of yin and yang: "The Gaihai people are mostly born in Xian. Salty, the dregs of fire also. The sea tribe has 34 out of 10 of those who have the water, and 56 out of 10 those who have the scum of fire. The genus is separated, separated from fire. Crabs, born of the scum of fire. ”
I will not translate the above paragraph, you know that he is talking in a serious way...
Seriously. Why marine life shines, in fact, is nothing more than to scare predators, communicate with each other, lure prey, breed courtship and so on. At present, the bioluminescence mechanisms that scientists have explored are divided into two types:
01 Fluorescein-Luciferase System:
Luciferin and luciferase usually do not emit light, when stimulated, luciferin will be oxidized by oxygen, hydrogen peroxide and other oxygen with the help of luciferase, at this time it is rich in a lot of energy, and then most of the energy is released in the form of light, the whole process almost does not produce heat, so the "negative fire" is not really on fire, and the luminous organism will not be burned by light.
This mechanism is the one used by most luminous organisms.
Luciferase molecular model of the luminescent microorganism "Polygonylothydophyllum"
02 Luminin System:
The luminescent protein system does not require enzymes and oxygen, but instead uses luminescent proteins. When calcium ions bind to luminescent proteins, they release carbon dioxide and emit light. This is how some jellyfish emit light, with the advantage of emitting light in an oxygen-free environment.
Thanks to modern science! We finally know that these sea errors can shine because they are "born of the scum of fire."
Written by | Canaan
Some of the images are from | Canaan Zeng Qianhui
WeChat Editor | glad