The current storms indicate that summer is passing into autumn, and at Lancashire MCS we are starting to think about our winter lectures; which we hope will bring some interest into the darker months for you! Each year those of us on the committee dive deep into our store of knowledge to bring some element of the underwater world to life…

A number of years ago the subject of underwater colour was brought up, and I had thought this would be an interesting subject (though I did not know enough about it to present a talk;-) Over the years since then I have been gathering some relevant publications, and thought that perhaps this year I would try to bring them together.

The subject rather quickly expanded, as considerations of physics (transmission of light underwater), incidental colour (plants cannot help but be green – though seaweeds often are not!) and behaviour (how animals manipulate colour for communication and camouflage) all have an important part to play. When we look at how organisms produce colour, we get a glimpse into deep-time; the genes for green fluorescent protein (or their analogues) are present in all metazoans, suggesting colour may have been important to the Ediacaran biota 540 MYA.

Is red a colour?

Our eyes have adapted to life above water, but reds and oranges are strongly absorbed in seawater, leaving a monochromatic green-blue world. A lot of sea life is red, however, and some deep sea fish generate red light. We might, therefore, suggest that the colour red is significant even if it is only visible up close: At distance red light is absorbed, so anything red appears grey or black. If you only want to advertise locally, and don’t want to attract the attention of the big fish lurking in the gloom, red might be the most important colour!

A comparison with other land animals suggests that colour perception in different species is likely to be very different to our own. Indeed, when age, visual defects, ill-health and genetics are taken into account, I might argue that colour is a personal experience, with even crude descriptions of ‘blue’ or ‘yellow’ meaning quite different things to each of us. (Web design in my day job, and it is quite important to ensure that text/background colour combinations are likely to be legible to readers!)

When we look at marine life, we see species with true colour perception ‘superpowers’. The most studied of these is that of the mantis shrimp – with twenty visual receptor types – twelve for colour (we have three), six for polarisation (we cannot detect this at all) and two for luminance (we have one). This suggests that the oceans are far from monochromatic, and there is hope for my talk…

See Unconventional colour vision by Justin Marshall and Kentaro Arikawa in Current Biology 24.24 (2014), R1150-R1154, for a primer in colour vision, and animal superpowers!

Barry Kaye

We are currently finalising our winter programme of lectures, and hope to have some external speakers this year alongside the ‘old guard’. please join us if you can – our Newsletter will keep you up-to-date.