400 years of sailors' stories shed light on glowing ocean events

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-04-11 09:07

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A new global database of glowing ocean events called "milky seas" combines over 400 years of eyewitness accounts from sailors with modern satellite data. These eerie, steady white glows can light up massive parts of the ocean for weeks and are sometimes even visible from space. Milky seas are thought to be caused by bacterial activity, but scientists still know very little about them because they are so rare. The new database has linked the phenomenon to climate patterns like El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the authors hope such insights will help researchers to predict and study these mysterious events.