An astonishing variety of living things generate light: bacteria, beetles, flies, fish, krill, millipedes, comb jellies, worms, squid, shrimp. For reasons we don't fully understand, most of these creatures live in the ocean. Below 3,000 feet, where sunbeams never reach, more than 80 percent of swimmers and floaters flash or glow in some man- ner. All fish that make their homes in these rayless ocean zones have eyes, presumably for the sole purpose of viewing such displays, some of which appear as ghostly blue-green beacons, others of which flash like Christmas strands that festoon rippling, pulsating forms of alien life.
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