Pete Stetson reporting:
One thing I've learned in my time here, at the base of the Melimoyu Volcano, is don't wait to take the picture. There's so much to discover and explore here, that it's easy to see something interesting and think, "oh, neat, I should take a picture of that later, when I have a free minute". If you wait, chances are things will have changed and the picture won't exist anymore: clouds come in and cover the volcano, or we get a really high tide and the birds move from the grasses at the upper-intertidal, or the wind picks up and the water clarity changes, you get the idea.
Well, tonight I was up late, looking at the CTD data and editing my thesis, so it was my job to turn off the generator. Once the generator goes off, this place becomes incredibly quiet; it's worth staying up just to hear it. As I walked back to the house, I was thinking about the glowing leaves that we saw on the jungle floor when we spent the night up on the hill for the tsunami. I had this feeling that I should hike up there to take the picture before it wasn't there to take anymore. But, given that it was already 1:30 AM and raining, I was more inclined to head to bed, or at least inside to finish up my notes from the day. So, in a compromise of sorts, I walked back to the house in the dark to see if we had anything that glows nearby.
We do.
Inside the bark of some dead trees (species to be identified tomorrow), I found a really bright source of glowing light (bright relative to the pitch black of the dense jungle, that is). If there's any ambient light from the moon, you need to do a glow-test by covering the source with your hand and putting your eyes up close. This way you can be sure you're not seeing reflected moonlight.
I went to get my camera and setup for the shot. It took a couple tries, but check out picture one: an 8 minute exposure of the glowing inside-tree bark. There was no artificial light source, and very little ambient moonlight through the rain clouds.
Picture two is the exact same shot, but taken much faster (~1second exposure) and with my headlamp on. My watch is also in the shot for scale.
So, yes, the rainforest floor in Melimoyu glows.
One thing I've learned in my time here, at the base of the Melimoyu Volcano, is don't wait to take the picture. There's so much to discover and explore here, that it's easy to see something interesting and think, "oh, neat, I should take a picture of that later, when I have a free minute". If you wait, chances are things will have changed and the picture won't exist anymore: clouds come in and cover the volcano, or we get a really high tide and the birds move from the grasses at the upper-intertidal, or the wind picks up and the water clarity changes, you get the idea.
Well, tonight I was up late, looking at the CTD data and editing my thesis, so it was my job to turn off the generator. Once the generator goes off, this place becomes incredibly quiet; it's worth staying up just to hear it. As I walked back to the house, I was thinking about the glowing leaves that we saw on the jungle floor when we spent the night up on the hill for the tsunami. I had this feeling that I should hike up there to take the picture before it wasn't there to take anymore. But, given that it was already 1:30 AM and raining, I was more inclined to head to bed, or at least inside to finish up my notes from the day. So, in a compromise of sorts, I walked back to the house in the dark to see if we had anything that glows nearby.
We do.
Inside the bark of some dead trees (species to be identified tomorrow), I found a really bright source of glowing light (bright relative to the pitch black of the dense jungle, that is). If there's any ambient light from the moon, you need to do a glow-test by covering the source with your hand and putting your eyes up close. This way you can be sure you're not seeing reflected moonlight.
I went to get my camera and setup for the shot. It took a couple tries, but check out picture one: an 8 minute exposure of the glowing inside-tree bark. There was no artificial light source, and very little ambient moonlight through the rain clouds.
Picture two is the exact same shot, but taken much faster (~1second exposure) and with my headlamp on. My watch is also in the shot for scale.
So, yes, the rainforest floor in Melimoyu glows.
Leave a comment