Day 8 of 30 in 30 - Isles of shoals, Maine Watercolor

Isles of shoals

Mini Watercolor 4x6" Mat
Purchase Info HERE

Still working on the mini's this month.

As a young teenager we would go sailing of the coast of Maine and I remember all the wonderful little spots along the rocky coast. As a girl born and raised in the Potato county aka Presque Isle seeing the coastal shores was amazing to me.

 I can remember the first evening in Bar Harbor, we rowed out to the sailboat at night with our dinghy filled to the brim. With the first stroke of the oar the water lit up with what I became to know as Bioluminescent Dinoflagellates. 

"If you have visited the ocean and witnessed the water at night, you may be pondering this question. The first scientist to document observations of glowing water was Anixinemenes in the year 500 B.C. He described light emitted by the sea when it was struck with an oar. Light in the ocean has been observed thousands of times since; these “mysterious glowing things” may even be responsible for some of the ghost stories told by sailors who witnessed the glowing waters but did not know the cause. Sightings of aerial bioluminescence have been documented; it appears the sky is glowing. It is assumed that bioluminescent particles are somehow carried into the air from the ocean, but no evidence has been found. Theories as to what is responsible for the things that glow at night have been proposed and many scientists have tried to unravel this mystery. The mystery has not been completely solved, but science is closer to discovering the truth." Allison Miller

Dinoflagellates:

"Dinoflagellates are the most common source of bioluminescence and are also known as Pyrrophyta or fire plants. Dinoflagellates are unicellular protists and are usually planktonic- ninety percent are marine plankton. They are small; many are microscopic, although the largest, Noctiluca, is 2 mm in diameter. Dinoflagellates are motile and swim by two flagella, which are movable protein strands. The longitudinal flagella extends from the sulcal groove at the posterior part of the cell and is responsible for the cells forward movement. The flattened flagella extends from the cingulum groove around the equator of the cell and provides the dinoflagellate with the ability to maneuver. Because of these two flagella, the dinoflagellate spirals when it moves."