Girl, You’re Glowing! The Iconic Anglerfish

Unless you’ve been liv­ing under a rock—or in the dark­est depths of the sea—I am guess­ing you’ve seen the video of the famed female angler­fish who swam 6,500 feet up from the ocean depths toward the sun as she was dying. This heart­break­ing image was caught by ocean con­ser­va­tion­ists off the coast of Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

This was the first time ever a live angler­fish was pho­tographed on the ocean’s sur­face. Born in per­fect dark­ness, she couldn’t have even known the sun exist­ed, but pro­pelled by blind faith, she sought out light before hers extin­guished and spent her last moments bob­bing on the water’s sur­face under the sun. 

Now, sci­en­tists will tell you that the only rea­sons this so-called “black sea dev­il” swam upward was because she lost her ori­en­ta­tion, was being pur­sued by a preda­tor, or was filled with gas from eat­ing bad shell­fish. They will tell you it was a mistake.

But the dream­ers know the sto­ry is more roman­tic than that. The world is con­stant­ly writ­ing per­fect poet­ry, but only some of us know how to read it. 

I think she came to remind us that we are all filled with dark and light and there is beau­ty to be found in each. The female angler­fish didn’t need to see the light. She was the light. And she already knew how to wield it. 

A female angler­fish is born with a type of pow­er­ful invis­i­bil­i­ty cloak so that she may eat with­out being eat­en. She has a long spine stick­ing out of her head. At the end of that spine rests a sac of bio­lu­mi­nes­cent bac­te­ria that emit light in blue wave­lengths that aren’t absorbed by water. This glow­ing orb attracts both mates and prey. And only female angler­fish have bio­lu­mi­nes­cence (suck on that, patriarchy).

But every time a deep ocean crea­ture lights up, it also risks being seen by hun­gry preda­tors. For pro­tec­tion, the female angler­fish has black skin that absorbs near­ly 100% of all light that hits it. They blend com­plete­ly into the black­ness around them, ren­der­ing them com­plete­ly invis­i­ble save their glit­ter­ing, lumi­nous sac.

She is a per­fect blend of light and dark, a glow­ing exam­ple of bril­liant evo­lu­tion. And she is more like us than we prob­a­bly realize. 

Humans glim­mer too. We make our own bio­lu­mi­nes­cence, but at lev­els 1,000 times less than the human eye can detect. This glow isn’t infrared radi­a­tion but actu­al­ly emit­ted light par­ti­cles, a byprod­uct of our metab­o­lism. Free rad­i­cals come in con­tact with flu­o­rophores and pro­duce pho­tons or light par­ti­cles. This glow is most­ly con­cen­trat­ed around our cheeks, fore­head, and neck, and is most com­mon dur­ing the after­noon, when our metab­o­lism is busiest. 

What I’m say­ing is this: we all con­tain dark and light. Wisdom comes from know­ing when to intel­li­gent­ly use each, when to hide in the dark­ness, and when to shine your shiny light to attract the right peo­ple and expe­ri­ences into your sphere. 

The female angler­fish is an icon. I hope she’s danc­ing on the oth­er side of the rain­bow bridge, shin­ing her black­est skin in the daz­zling light.