Image of brooding snake star

Description:

The main image is a composite I made (overlay) of the brittle star bioluminescencing in the dark and the image of the brittle star hit with a flash. I had read that Amphipholis squamata had bioluminescence but hadn't seen any images from the California coast, so I brought home a few from the docks at Jack London and took lots of photos, some 30 minutes long at my highest ISO and got nothing. I did some more reading and 200mM KCl can cause a depolarization event leading to extreme bioluminescence so I dissolved a Emergen-C vitamin fizzy drink that has potassium carbonate in it in a minimal amount of water and added that to a few isolated brittle stars and BAM! Light show!