No one has ever seen a living gi-ant squid, according to Edith Widder, a senior scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Fla. The only way anyone knows these animals exist is that their bodies float when they die. Widder is an expert in biolumines-cence—visible light made by living creatures—and has set out to photograph it. For a fairly common marine phenomenon, biolumines-cence has been maddeningly elusive to photographers. Widder believes a technique that can successfully photograph marine biolu-minescence could be the key to studying the giant squid and, perhaps, vast ocean populations that have yet to be discovered.
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