On the rugged coast of Nova Scotia, waves crash, gulls cry, and fog rolls in thick off the Atlantic. It’s easy to imagine that nothing has changed here in centuries—and at the Fortress of Louisbourg, it truly hasn’t.

Every spring, as the night wraps Toyama Bay in a blanket of stars, another constellation appears just below the surface of the sea. Glowing blue, pulsing softly, the firefly squid—known in Japan as Hotaru Ika—emerges from the depths in a dazzling marine light show that defies logic and feels like magic.