英文原稿

Biofluorescence, which is a phenomenon that we're stilllearning a lot about. Sunlight hits thefluorescent molecules in an organism likea fish or a coral, excites those molecules,and they give off light of a longerlower-energy wavelength. You hit them with a blue light, they're going to give offgreens, reds, oranges, yellows. The Zodiac is going tocome in and pick Mike up, and then we can moveit to position. We needed to capturebiofluorescent imagery of corals, fishes, anything we came across. Filming biofluorescentanimals is the big process. For all this stuff,it's the first time. People have done alot of these things, so everything we build ourselves. We had to build a camera, house it, put iton a submersible. The submersible had noway of communicating with a camera on theoutside when we started, so it was reallyoverwhelming at first, but it did slowly come together. We started with simpleoperations, scuba dives, getting the camerasout to shallow water, and then moved on to using the submersible andthe deeper water equipment. In the Tropical Pacific, you have very clear ocean waters. The longer wavelengths of light get filtered out very quickly, and so within 50, 60, 80 feet, it's very blue. Surface, [inaudible]present depth is 1, 8, 0, 180 meters. These animals evolve in thisclear, blue environment. We want to mimic thatwith our cameras. Then over the lens, wehave to put what we call a longpass filter so we can see the longerlower-energy wavelengths that the fluorescentorganisms give off. Look at that, [inaudible] We were shocked, essentially, that every camera worked when we got outthere, surprisingly. Now go down on theshoulder a little. Not all the more idealin the footage we got, but for a firstshot, it was great. Now that we've gotten imagery, there's lots ofunanswered questions. For example, weknow nothing about the molecules that areproducing the fluorescence, and that's where wewant to take this next.