Bioluminescent Dinoflagellate

When waves crash on certain tropical beaches, the water glows blue. This bioluminescence comes from dinoflagellates—single-celled organisms that flash when mechanically disturbed. Touch them and they glow; swim through them and trails of light mark your path. The display seems counterproductive: why advertise your location to predators? The answer may lie in the 'burglar alarm' hypothesis—the light attracts predators not of the dinoflagellate but of whatever disturbed it.

A small crustacean grazing on dinoflagellates creates a localized glow that attracts fish. The fish eat the crustacean; the dinoflagellates survive. The light is not advertisement but alarm, summoning secondary predators against primary grazers. The dinoflagellates have weaponized their predators' predators, trading minor consumption (some get eaten during the disturbance) for major protection (predators attract bigger predators that terminate grazing).

The flash mechanism requires no neural system. Mechanical stress triggers biochemical cascades in individual cells, each flash lasting milliseconds. Aggregated across billions of cells, disturbance creates rolling waves of light across ocean surfaces. The display's scale emerges from simple cellular responses to physical contact. The business parallel illuminates defensive attention-drawing. Rather than hiding from threats, dinoflagellates attract attention to threats—summoning allies against attackers. Whistleblower protections, public disclosure of attacks, and transparency strategies follow similar logic: making threats visible attracts defenders who might not otherwise intervene. The strategy works when defensive attention is available to summon and when the cost of initial exposure is less than the protection attention provides.