Rare footage was captured just after sunset Monday, July 15, of glowing fireworms in Newport Harbor. The tiny worms lit up the dark water in a mating ritual, the females luring their mates with a streak of green glow.
Photographer Patrick Coyne, known for his late-night adventures chasing bioluminescent waves across Southern California, got a call from a man in Newport Beach alerting him of the glowing creatures zipping around in the harbor.
Coyne was intrigued enough to travel down from Torrance, his camera ready to capture the phenomenon. Just after sunset, he saw the fast-moving green streaks light up the water.
“I was like, ‘What in the world is this?’ It’s crazy,” he said. “And they weren’t fish, they’re worms. They’re a glowing fireworm.”
He immediately reached out Dean Sauer, a friend and a scientist who founded PyroFarms in San Diego, which specializes in bioluminescence, who knew about an article written for Scripps Institution of Oceanography about the creatures back in 2012.
“It’s a mating ritual that the female initiates,” Coyne said. “So that way, the male can see where she is, and it happens at a specific time at night, only a few days after the new moon.
“It’s very rare to see, not many people are seeing this.”
It’s unlike the bioluminescence Coyne has documented countless times in the past several years, created by plankton that light up in the dark of night when agitated, like when waves crash.
“It’s the actual worm that’s producing it. So it’s not the water that’s glowing,” he said.
The worm is small, only about an inch long, he said. It only lights up for 10 to 15 seconds before disappearing.
From a filming standpoint, it was extremely difficult to capture, Coyne said, because moving slightly could cause a blur in the image and the focus has to be just right.
“It’s new, so I think for me, it’s like Top 5, ” he said of his many documented experiences. “Because it’s actually not the water that’s producing the bioluminescence. It’s not an algae, which is what we normally see, but it’s the actual animal that’s producing it. So I’ve never seen that. This is my first time seeing green bioluminescence in the ocean, where it’s always been blue. So it’s special, because it’s rare.”
There have been occasional sightings in Mission Bay in San Diego, documented by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Latz Laboratory.
“The fireworm Odontosyllis phosphororea is a local polychaete worm that inhabits the bays of San Diego. They normally live in parchment tubes that are attached to hard surfaces. But every summer within a few days of the quarter moon, these tiny worms emerge and present a spectacular display of mating while emitting a bright blue-green light,” according to an article by the laboratory.
The females come first to the surface, releasing eggs in a glowing cloud of mucus. The males, which have large eyes, are attracted to the glow and then spawn. The entire process takes half an hour.
Research also shows the worms may use the glowing mucus as a defense mechanism.
