Bioluminescence at our fingertips - Kayaking

Once leaving Tamarindo for the second time, we decided that we wanted to do just a little more before we left this wonderful country. We drove southeast for 148 km which took us 3 and a half hours to the small town of Paquera. During the drive we had a short break in Nicoya for a traditional Costa Rican lunch.

The special thing about Nicoya is that it is one of the five original Blue Zones in the world. Blue zones are the regions around the world where people commonly live longer, healthier lives than average, and often a larger proportion of the population reaches 100 years or over. One contributing factor to a long healthy live is the food that the people in this region eat. In Nicoya it consists out of beans, rice, salad, corn tortillas, some protein or cheese and fresh fruit juices. We went to this traditional restaurant twice during our stay in Costa Rica, it was a nice way to break up the long intense driving.

Later that day when we arrived at the town of Paquera. We got to our house, jumped into our swimmers and then drove to the ferry landing to go kayaking in the Gulf of Nicoya. This area is famous for its bioluminescence.

Learning about bioluminescence

So what is bioluminescence? It is life that emits light through a chemical reaction. That night we saw a type of marine plankton in the ocean that glows bright blue in the dark.

The two chemicals that create the chemical reaction are called luciferin and luciferase, that in the presence of oxygen emit light. Both words come from the Latin word ‘lucifer’ meaning light bearer (this meaning predates its more sinister and well-known usage – so no, this has nothing to do with the devil!). An interesting thing is that different types of luciferins can be different colours.

Bioluminescent marine algae (which belongs to the plankton family) only glows when it gets moved around through other forms of energy. In our case the movement of our paddles or our hands in the water make these algae start to glow. But why does it glow?

The marine algae are at the bottom of the food chain, so they have a lot of predators. They use light as a defence mechanism. It can also be used to alert larger predators to the presence of a smaller predator. The light can confuse or startle their predators.

Bioluminescence in more technical detail

Microscopic algae are split up into two different sectors one called diatoms, and the other are dinoflagellates. Some of these dinoflagellates are bioluminescent which is why the ocean glows. Dinoflagellates are single celled organism. But bioluminescence is not always in the ocean, it is also found in fireflies and some types of mushrooms.

One thing that our kayaking guide said that I thought was very interesting, was that in areas with high amounts of algae and bioluminescent dinoflagellates, there are a lot of mangroves this is because they produce nutrient-rich conditions that can support the growth of these dinoflagellates. This causes ‘red tides’ also called algal blooms, primarily of dinoflagellates. The decaying leaves and roots from mangroves release nutrients that feeds the algae. The algae also use photosynthesis to get energy. How do they reproduce? A single cell grows and then divides into two identical daughter cells.

The wonder of seeing Bioluminescence

Now enough of all this technical stuff. What was it like to kayak with bioluminescent algae? When we got to the Paquera ferry landing we met our guides, put on life jackets and jumped into the kayaks. A funny thing was that as my mum got into the kayak her pants ripped so unfortunately, she had to do the tour with a big hole; at least our tour was mainly under the cover of darkness.

When we first got out on the water it was about to get dark. The sunset from out on the water was stunning with all the rich red, orange and purple colours filling the sky. It had to get quite dark before we could see the bioluminescence. The only way I can try to describe it is like the water was sparkly like there was glitter in it, but it also reminded me of the stars. The sky was really clear that night, so it was cool to look up and think that less than two months ago, I was looking up at the stars from the Atacama Desert, and now I am in Costa Rica floating around in the Gulf of Nicoya looking at bioluminescence.

We were not able to take any photos during this adventure, since it would probably be challenging to get a good quality photo, and knowing our luck we did not want to risk taking our phones out there because we would probably come back with one less phone. I have attached stock photos that are very similar to what we saw, just for illustrative purposes.

The next day we travelled on the car ferry across the gulf. When we looked down at the water from high above the car deck, we could see what I think may have been the ‘red tide’. In some sections it looked like we were sailing through striped sections of blood. It seriously looked like some animal had a very bad day. But it was the algae again that had created the very eerie red bloody colour.

The night was honestly amazing, and I would 100% recommend you see it if you have a chance. My brain could not even fully comprehend what my eyes were seeing!

Thanks for joining me in this blog. The next one will be in the Monteverde Cloud Forest.