Case file · High strangeness
The Lima's milky sea and the satellite
On the night of 25 January 1995 the British merchant ship SS Lima, off the Horn of Africa, sailed for six hours through sea glowing white from horizon to horizon.
1995 CE · 13.00, 52.00 · status: explained
The account
Sailors had told of 'milky seas' for centuries; Jules Verne put one in 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'. In 2005 Steven Miller and colleagues found the same night's patch in US military satellite images: a glowing area about 15,400 km², the size of Connecticut.
The sceptical view
Natural: the glow is thought to come from huge numbers of luminous bacteria (Vibrio harveyi) living on algae blooms.