Wheels of Poseidon

The Wheels of Poseidon are a biological phenomenon in which bioluminescent zooplankton create a luminescent wake from the bows of ships in the Indian Ocean. The perception from the luminescent wakes is that it resembles the spokes of a wheel, thus the name. (Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea.) The detonation of explosives underwater has also been observed to produce the effect.

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Willy Ley talked about this phenomena in an essay written for Galaxy magazine, and published in book form in 1967 in Willy Ley's For Your Information: On Earth and in the Sky.