The van’s effort to navigate the pitted dirt road through the thick Puerto Rico jungle jostles us in our seats. We bounce along and try to see where we are heading, but the impenetrably thick forest canopy blocks our view. Our destination, on this dark December evening in 2019, is Mosquito Bay. A horrid-sounding name for a small inlet of brackish water on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island that is filled with the highest concentration of bioluminescent dinoflagellates in the world. Each dinoflagellate is a single algal cell, encased in a hard-plated shell capable of photosynthesis. It whirls around with two long whip-like flagella that can slide into a belt-like groove around its center. There are over two million cells per gallon of Pyrodinium bahamense var. bahamense, the glowing dinoflagellate we had come to see in this ill-named bay on the island of Vieques. Our trip has required two cars, a plane, a ship, this van, and somewhere in the thick blackness, kayaks. 
         Our van is parked at a steep angle, so we have to climb over a slope to get out of the vehicle. We plop into a muddy, rutted road in our water shoes and trudge after our tour guide toward dim lamp light flickering through the trees. Our guide hands out well-used life vests and assigns us three to a kayak. My kids go with Adam, and I climb into the back of a yellow plastic sit-aboard with a Japanese mom and her five-year-old son. We grip our paddles and plunge them into the dark waters. A burst of blue-green fairy-dust sparks explodes in the bay, like twirling dandelion seeds in a windstorm, swirling around any disturbance before fading into blackness. We gasp in a collective moment of awe echoing across the dark, quiet lagoon.
         The water glows. Bioluminescence in the ocean is not unusual. Many creatures create the chemical luciferin, which produces a burst of bright light when activated in the presence of oxygen. Short-lived and intense, dinoflagellates use this explosion of brilliance to scare away predators. If repeated a million times, this happens. 
         Above us, the star-pinpricked night mirrors the sparkling water. We are sandwiched between bursting biological lights whose numbers and brilliance resemble constellations and gaseous giants so far away they look like glowing unicellular life dotting a celestial bay.
         I am entranced as I watch my paddle glide through the water, outlined in the blue-green illumination, sparkles eddy off the edges, drift momentarily, then vanish. I feel like a Disney princess surrounded by my godmother’s magic dust. At any moment, my shady clothing will turn into a ball gown, and my kayak will become a chariot. There is magic in the water, the biological magic of adding oxygen to molecules, causing a momentary shape change, and shooting photons to spark light in billions of cells. 
         However, just like all fairy tales, there is a dark side. Pyrodinium bahamense is the same variety of dinoflagellate that can cause toxic algal blooms. When Pyrodinium bahamense becomes overly abundant, it can create and release saxitoxins, which can cause deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning. If you find yourself near toxin-laden waters, your eyes sting, and your lungs become irritated, making breathing difficult. These harmful algal blooms are called red tides because the brown-red Pyrodinium cells are so dense that they color the water red. I’ve sailed through red tides on Adam’s father’s sailboat, coughing and hacking for hours, eyes burning and streaming with tears. 
         Paddling in Mosquito Bay, I experience no discomfort, just the thrill of magical sparkles. 
         To glow or to poison, that is the question. Both defense strategies allow the dinoflagellates to escape crustacean predation. One causes a biological wonder of the world, a tourism industry, jobs, and documentaries, while the other closes beaches and fisheries and harms animals and people. All so a small, shelled cell isn’t eaten by a hungry crustacean. 
         Current science suggests that creating the toxin and the glow both cost the dinoflagellate energy and are triggered by crowded conditions. Amazingly, it isn’t always a dichotomous choice; sometimes, both defenses can be utilized to great success. A little bit of toxin and a lot of glow can teach the predators to avoid the sparkles. Like a punch to a bully's eye, learning the lesson only takes a moment of discomfort. Not all populations of these dinoflagellates can produce both chemicals. Some focus on glowing and startling their predators, while others crank out the toxins and lean into death. The dinoflagellates make population-level choices about cruelty versus beauty or a mix of the two. Scare or kill or punch out an eye. 
         There is a lesson for our society here in Mosquito Bay. In our overcrowded lives of constant stimulus and stress, we can continue to poison our surroundings in our effort to escape predation by the oligarchy beast. Our poison decreases the value of our world, making those around us hack and cry. Or maybe we choose to shock and shout, be loud and ostentatious, causing those around us to stare at the show we are making. Maybe in the stare our predators see and tremble in the face of the beautiful, grand, and unexpected. Or maybe every once in a while, we choose to fight selectively, and in so doing, our brilliant display becomes a warning that can’t be ignored. We stand in the need of choosing. Our society lurching from predation.  If we don’t choose quickly and coordinately we may run out of time for our response to be effective. We will be plucked of insolation, spinning uselessly with our lowly flagella unable to avoid our predators. 
         The choice must be a societal one, only effective in community. 
         As I paddle through the lagoon, I hear the sound of my husband and kids' exclamations in the darkness. I’m so joyful that some groups of living organisms have chosen beautiful, luminous scare tactics over poisonous death. This place, this night, this moment, this magical awe, so endangered, wouldn’t exist otherwise.