Photo: Reddit via Mohiemen Tanim
Redditor Moheimen Tanim recently posted mysterious photos that are stirring up a big reaction. The three images show a strange red glow in the clouds and, according to Tanim, were taken by a pilot flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Other redditors immediately responded with a lot of different theories, from it being the end of days to comparing the scene to this season's Stranger Things. But, the most sensible explanation points to fishing as the culprit for the red glow.
One Redditor pointed out that the glow was most likely caused by red LED lights attached to fishing vessels looking to attract saury. The fish are attracted to the lights and vacuumed aboard, allowing the fishermen to catch thousands of saury at a time.
The fishing method is often used to catch Pacific saury, particularly by Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese fishermen. Atlantic saury is found as far north as the Gulf of Saint Lawrence all the way down to Bermuda and also from Iceland down to Morocco. So though it's unclear where in the Atlantic the pilot took these photos, it's entirely possible that the red glow is due to the LED lights.
In fact, a similar situation happened in May in China. The skies of a port city turned deep red, sparking panic until a fishing company said that the apocalyptic skies were due to their fishing boats. LED fishing is attractive to fishermen because the lightweight LEDs mean that less fuel is needed for their boats. They can also cut down on by-catch and the need for nets, which is beneficial to the environment. However, the large number of fish they attract means overfishing, which can be damaging to the ecosystem, is a concern.
The internet went wild with theories as to why these clouds over the Atlantic turned red.
Photo: Reddit via Mohiemen Tanim
But most likely, this was due to fishermen using LED lights to attract their catch.
Photo: Delta Electronics via YouTube
h/t: [Interesting Engineering, Daily Mail]
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