the blue flash

When I was in college, I (and some other science geek friends) once stayed out until 3 a.m. to catch the bioluminescent flash caused by dinoflagellates in the breaking waves at La Jolla Shores. We would've flipped our wigs over this:
Satellite images confirm mystery glow in ocean
The newly released images show a vast region of the Indian Ocean, about the size of Connecticut, glowing three nights in a row. The luminescence was also spotted from a ship in the area.

"So, our best working hypothesis is that we are witnessing bioluminescence produced by bacteria that are colonizing some kind of organic material present in the water," he said. "Satellite detection will hopefully allow us to target milky seas with properly equipped research vessels that will then be able to answer all these questions definitively."