The discovery of biofluorescence may still be at its infancy stage, finding forms of it in aquatic organisms such as corals, jelly fish, sharks and others only in the last 10 years, but researchers recently discovered another species that exudes biofluorescent characteristics - a turtle.

At first glance, researchers thought that the species caught on cam resembled an underwater UFO, but as they went along filming, they discovered a glowing turtle and it is the first biofluorescent reptile ever recorded, says a National Geographic report.

Flashing neon colors of green and red in the dark, marine biologists in Solomon Islands said that the spaceship-looking species is actually an endangered kind of turtle, the hawksbill sea turtle.

"I was taking pictures of corals that we already knew for biofluorescence and then, in the middle, I guess almost 40 minutes into the dive, out of the blue it almost looks like a bright red and green spaceship that came into my camera," said marine biologist from City University of New York, David Gruber, as reported by National Geographic.

According to Gruber, biofluorescent marine animals were often seen with only one color, either green or red, but for the hawksbill sea turtle, it had beautiful stripes of the two colors.

The discovery of glowing turtles has opened up new questions like how this characteristic benefit the turtles, Gruber also told National Geographic.

"What is it doing with the turtles? We know that they have really good vision, they go under these long, arduous migration, but how are they using this? Are they using it to find each other, or to attract each other?" Gruber said.

According to ScienceAlert, Gruber said it will be difficult to find more information about the glowing turtles since only a few of its kind were left alive and the species is currently being protected.

"I've been [studying turtles] for a long time and I don't think anyone's ever seen this," director of the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, Alexander Gaos, told National Geographic. Gaos was not a part of the team who discovered the glowing turtles.

Newsweek explains in a report that biofluorescence is different from bioluminescence. The former occurs when a "material like the exterior of this turtle's shell, absorb light at one wavelength and emits it at another"; this effect makes it look like the animals are "glowing." Luminescence, on the other hand, is a characteristic of an animal that enables it to produce its own light.