Years ago I accompanied my college classmates to Jamaica for a month long diving/reef research trip. Halfway into our stay we made a sidetrip to The Glistening Waters Lagoon one evening. It’s home to millions of dinoflagellates that, when disturbed, produce a natural phosphorescence in the water.
After dark and a big supper, we took a boat out into the lagoon and dove in. In a surreal experience, we were surrounded by the bioluminescing organisms and both our bodies as well as the water around us glowed with a pale but fascinating light.
This experience has left me curious about two things.
One; would the filter feeders that exist in the area and dine on these tiny organisms produce marine poop that is itself bioluminescent, and
Two; could these organisms exist in the human digestive tract along with the many other bacteria and whatnot and cause a person’s poop to light up?
If so, would the seaborne doodoo;
a) just give off a faint glow,
b) blink like a firefly or
c) light up when agitated, like when someone bumped into it.
Isn’t bioluminesence caused by bacteria? If the bacteria is expelled with the the excrement I guess self glowing poop is possible. However, if you are talking about something as small as dinoflagellates, then I doubt it is any internal bacteria that is coming out. Could it be the still chemically active corpses of the little critters?
I recall an episode of SeaQuest that dealt with this- the weasely guy on the SeaQuest found these mysterious glowing stones on the seabed and was trying to market them as some new precious stone, until a marine scientist onboard determined that they were fecal pellets of some giant organism that fed on biolumanescent creatures.
Here’s a few interesting excerpts on bioluminesence from my encyclopedia:
“In 1986 scientists produced bioluminescent tobacco plants by inserting the luciferase gene into the genetic material of the plants.”
“Lanterns made of fireflies are used in a number of countries, and a pyrex flask containing a pure culture of Photobacterium phosphoreum gives off enough light to illuminate an object several meters away.”
An organism can either bioluminesce itself through chemical reactions in the body, or can utilize bioluminecent bacteria held in an organ. So could we replicate this with some clever bioengineering? I say if we can put a man on the moon, damn straight we can make a turd glow!
