Counterillumination

Counter-illumination is a method of active camouflage seen in marine animals such as firefly squid and midshipman fish, and in military prototypes, producing light to match their backgrounds in both brightness and wavelength.

Marine animals of the mesopelagic (mid-water) zone tend to appear dark against the bright water surface when seen from below. They can camouflage themselves, often from predators but also from their prey, by producing light with bioluminescence photophores on their lower surfaces, reducing the contrast of their silhouettes against the background. The light may be produced by the animals themselves, or by symbiotic bacteria, often Aliivibrio fischeri. Counter-illumination differs from countershading, which uses only pigments such as melanin to reduce the appearance of shadows. It is one of the dominant types of aquatic camouflage, along with transparency and silvering. All three methods make animals in open water resemble their environment.

Counter-illumination has not so far come into widespread military use, but during the Second World War it was trialled in ships in the Canadian Diffused lighting camouflage project and in the American Yehudi lights project.

In the sea, counter-illumination is one of three dominant methods of underwater camouflage, the other two being transparency and silvering. Among marine animals, especially crustaceans, cephalopods, and fish, counter-illumination camouflage occurs where bioluminescent light from photophores on an organism's ventral surface is matched to the light radiating from the environment. The bioluminescence is used to obscure the organism's silhouette produced by the down-welling light. Counter-illumination differs from countershading, also used by many marine animals, which uses pigments to darken the upper side of the body while the underside is as light as possible, white. Countershading fails when the light falling on the animal's underside is too weak to make it appear roughly as bright as the background. This commonly occurs when the background is the relatively bright ocean surface, and the animal is swimming in the mesopelagic depths of the sea. Counter-illumination goes further than countershading, actually brightening the under side of the body.

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