Dazzled by the Light

Before I visited the Puerto Rican island of Vieques I had heard about the phenomenon of bioluminescence, envisioning it as an ethereal and glowing nocturnal surf. But I never dreamed I would swim in it, under the stars, and that it would far surpass anything I could have imagined.

“It’s the most psychedelic experience you’ll ever have without using drugs,” a fellow tourist promised. He might also have said that Puerto Rico’s bioluminescent bay is among the rarest and most fragile of ecological systems in existence, and that, like so many of our planet’s dwindling treasures, it is threatened with extinction by commercial development. This is what it was like to bask in awe under the ticking clock of the stars, humbled by nature’s gift of bioluminescence…

Island Adventures BioBay Tours advertises its services as, “Interpretive Eco-Tours of the World’s Brightest Glowing Bay.” It sounds fancy, but like most things on Vieques the tour is unpretentious. We meet at the Island Adventures waiting room at 7:00 pm on a night when the moon rises late, so it won't diminish our bioluminescent experience. The large room is covered from floor to ceiling with murals of mangroves, exotic aquatic creatures, and the constellations. Black lights cast an eerie glow on the images, hinting at what will come. Benches line the room, and excited tourists take every available seat.

Then our tour guide arrives. Fluent in both English and Spanish, he is funny and a bit of a prankster. As he paces over an enlarged floor mural of the microscopic organism that is the real star of the show, he alternates between both languages to educate and entertain us: The unique bio-bay we are about to visit is home for up to 720,000 single-celled, bioluminescent dinoflagellates per gallon of water. He asks us to guess if the organisms are plant or animal. While we ponder the answer he makes a “ta-da” gesture and says, “They’re both!” They make chlorophyll from the sun but use their tails to move about at will, he tells us. And the flashes of light they emit (the tour group leans forward, fascinated) are in response to motion stimuli.

When our tour introduction ends, we load into a dilapidated, circa 1950s tour bus. “This will be a scary ride,” the guide warns us… and it is. The ancient, battered bus bumps over steep mountain roads so narrow that tree branches intrude through the open windows, forcing passengers to close the ones that still function. But many windows are broken, so we scramble to reseat ourselves and save our tender skins.

When we arrive at the launch site, other guides take our hands and lead us one by one up a narrow plank to board a large, pontoon-like craft that is open to the sky. When everyone is seated it slips noiselessly into the bay, powered by electricity so it won’t emit pollutants into the water. Then we look up at the stars, and the magic officially begins. Our guide produces a laser light and points the green beam at various constellations, creating an illusion that the beam extends all the way through the universe to the stars themselves. His description of the constellations is accurate and informative. “Where’s the North Star?” someone asks. He zaps it with his laser, explaining that, although small, it shines from a fixed position.

As the electric vessel glides noiselessly into the bay, I ask why it is surrounded by running lights, thinking the greenish glow might diminish the natural bioluminescence. “Those aren’t running lights, they’re dinoflagellates responding to the motion of the craft,” the guide explains. It’s difficult to grasp that this light, so bright it illuminates the water to a depth of two feet as we pass, is the creation of organic micro-organisms.

The craft slows to a drift, and the guide uses a standard lantern to illuminates the mangroves lining the bay shoreline. Easily identified by tangled roots, which make them appear to be standing or walking on the surface of the water, mangroves often are referred to as "walking trees.” Our guide describes how the roots provide a protective environment for aquatic organisms, creating the nutrient-rich water in which bioluminescent dinoflagellates can thrive.

“Now,” he announces, “it’s time for a swim.” He switches off the lantern. Once again, we are adrift under a silent ocean of stars. We line up for life jackets, and I hear another guide counting us as we step backwards down a ladder into the bay. The water is silky and warm.

A high point of the 80s film, “The Abyss” was the discovery of scintillating, underwater creatures of light from another planet that seemed to dance as they moved. That's how we look to each other as we swim in the bay, igniting millions of flashing lights in the shapes of our bodies as the dinoflagellates respond to our movements. We glow like opals. We twinkle like fairies. We seem to absorb something magical from the luminescence, becoming as playful as children, even those of us who are grandparents. Splashing and laughing, experimenting with moves to see what kind of sparkles we can create, we lose track of time in the sphere of water, space and light that surrounds us. When the guide calls that it is time to go, nobody wants to get out of the bay. “OK,” he says, speaking to us as the children we have become, “You can have 10 more minutes.” We reluctantly climb up the ladder 20 minutes later, still glittering as we lift ourselves from the water.

While my experience in the bio-bay is one I will remember forever, I also can’t help but wonder if even the relatively benign tour we have taken isn’t harmful to the dinoflagellates’ ecosystem. As tourism on the island of Vieques expands, biobay tours either will be eliminated or the increasing volume of tours will destroy the bioluminescent environment… and If history is any guide it will be the later. During my trip, in the city of Old San Juan on the main island, our cab driver described the public outcry made over a new hotel that Donald Trump wanted to erect on a protected shoreline. “What happened?” we asked. “There it is,” he said, pointing to Trump's brand-new hotel. “He paid off the government and got his building permit.”

Those who would like to experience the biobay while it still exists can get more information at http://www.biobay.com/