I had kayaked in phosphorescent seas before, so I had some idea what to expect. A few years ago, on a trip in the San Juan islands off the Washington coast, a friend and I had been paddling back to our camp site in the dark. We noticed that our bow waves and the froth from our paddle strokes were catching an unknown source of light. Then we noticed that our bow waves and paddle strokes were emitting a faint light, and the joy of that discovery is something I will never forget.
I tried to convey to the others on my Ha Long Bay trip something of the magic of this spectacle, but it is hard to wax rhapsodic about glowing algae without sounding a little loopy. Besides, they would soon find out for themselves.
Phosphorescent algae flash briefly when agitated. Paddle strokes become starbursts. Kayaks skate along on a bed of sparks. We were meant to be out on the water for fifteen minutes. Instead we spent two hours splashing around like kids in a tub.
The night waters of Ha Long Bay held an additional surprise. Every so often, a paddle blade would ignite a larger, baseball-sized orb of green light bright enough to illuminate the bottom of the boat and prolonged enough to be seen as it trailed off in the kayak’s wake.
Capturing one of these glowing objects became an obsession, one that I thought would prove fruitless. Kayaks are reasonably nimble, but they don’t easily jump two feet to the right, and they don’t quickly reverse course. Catching a briefly glowing watery orb drifting on ocean currents is not a simple task.
Our tour guide, Thuy, offered the hypothesis that the glowing objects were just plastic bags. The outlandishness of this suggestion underscored an unsettling fact: Thuy was afraid of dark water and he was afraid of whatever it was giving off that light. He had admitted earlier that he had a superstitious fear of a large hand pulling him down into the blackness. The water was only four feet deep.
Finally our efforts paid off. We managed to corral one of the objects between two boats, and I scooped up the small, transparent jellyfish in the loose cage of my fingers. It glowed around the edges, where it was fringed with tiny tentacles.
Anything coated in jellyfish juice glowed brightly when struck. By passing around the creature and then clapping our hands, we set off twinkling light shows on our palms. A slap on the boat left a small nighttime city on the deck.
I caught four jellyfish altogether. No one else caught any. I don’t know to what to attribute this new-found talent, other than the fact that I seemed to be the only one truly confident the jellies wouldn’t sting.
In the end, even Thuy was delighted by our night journey.
