Swimming is supposed to give you a healthy glow, but these swimmers were not quite sure what was going on when they took a late-night dip and turned a fluorescent shade of blue. "It was like we were playing with radioactive paint", said photographer Phil Hart who snapped the bizarre sight as his friends emerged from a lake in the dark of night.
The light is created by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which happens when a naturally-occuring micro-organism in the water is disturbed. These images are particularly stunning because the concentration of the micro-organism Noctiluca Scintillans was abnormally high when he took the photos at Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia.
The light is created by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which happens when a naturally-occuring micro-organism in the water is disturbed. These images are particularly stunning because the concentration of the micro-organism Noctiluca Scintillans was abnormally high when he took the photos at Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia.
Phil, 34, put his camera on a very slow shutter speed and threw sand and stones into the water to cause the reaction and capture as much of the blue haze as possible.
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It is believed the combination of bushfires and floods created the high levels of nutrients in the lakes for the organisms to feed.
