Glowing green and swimming off the corner of the picture, the eel looked unnatural, as if it had been Photoshopped with DayGlo colors. “That darn eel," says biologist David Gruber, led to a weeklong eel-catching expedition near the sandy beaches of Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas.
Gruber teaches biology and environmental science at Baruch College in Manhattan, but his passion is scuba diving with dinoflagellates, a phylum of single-celled organisms that contains some species that glow brightly, lighting up darkened seas. His group’s photographs of other radiant Caribbean creatures—including sea anemones, coral and fishes—illuminate the new "Creatures of Light" exhibit, an American Museum of Natural History show that celebrates all things bioluminescent (producing their own light) or biofluorescent (absorbing light and reemitting it as a different color). “When you swim in the water at night," Gruber says of his tropical study sites, "it’s like a disco party.”.
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