At first glance, it seems as if these rocks over the Seto Inland Sea in Okayama, Japan are bleeding or crying. Maybe, the blue glowing blood drops are trickling down the stones. If you look closely, you will realize that it is a bioluminescent shrimp!
This beautiful image was captured by Tdub Photo, a multimedia company based in Japan. In a series of photographs captioned as, “The Weeping Stones,” the photographers poured the bioluminescent shrimp over the rocks to make it seem like the tears were dripping down from them. Bioluminescence is one of the most beautiful natural phenomena in the world, and these pictures do justice to the beauty of this wonder.
However, these rocks are not the natural habitat of these shrimps, so the photographers had to use a little bit of creativity. These bioluminescent creatures are called Vargula hilgendorfii or sea fireflies. These sea fireflies are native to the southern coasts of Japan and are about 3 millimeters in length. They are found at the base of shallow waters and surface during the night where the Tdub duo Trevor Williams and Jonathan Galione fished them out.
“They generally live in the sand in shallow water so you often see them being washed up on the shore, but in order to get quantities like we use in our photos you have to fish them out,” they wrote on their website.
Afterwards, they used jars with holed lids, rope, and bacon to catch the fish. The jars were covered with duct tape to make sure that they don’t break when dropped in the water. With bacon in the jars, these were then submerged in the water for almost an hour. The bacon was used as a bait though. Next, the shrimps caught in the jars were poured over the rocks.
The photographers said that the shrimps only glow for about 20 to 30 minutes outside water. They will get their glow back if you cover them with the water again. Here are some of the mesmerizing photos taken by the duo.
For more of these enchanting images, you can visit Tdub Photo’s website.
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