In a beautiful and slightly spooky series, photographer Shaun Jeffers explores the Waitomo Caves of New Zealand, where thousands of tiny glow worms turn limestone ceilings into a living night sky. We first found his images via Bored Panda, and they remain some of the most otherworldly cave photography we have ever seen.
The Tiny Creature Behind the Light Show
The lights belong to Arachnocampa luminosa, a species of fungus gnat found only in New Zealand. In its larval stage, the insect glows a steady blue-green from its tail end, then spins dozens of silk threads beaded with sticky droplets that hang like strings of glass. Flying insects rise toward what looks like open night sky, get snared in the lines, and become dinner. It is a carnivorous trap dressed up as starlight, and it works because in a lightless cave the glow is irresistible.
The hungrier a larva is, the brighter it burns. Thousands glowing together give the caves their signature ceiling of blue stars, dense enough in places that early explorers could navigate the underground river by their light alone.
Photographing an Underground Galaxy
Jeffers shot this series in Ruakuri Cave, often standing for hours in cold underground water while long exposures gathered the faint light. The technique reveals what the eye only half perceives down there. Every point resolves into a sharp star, the silk snares shimmer like rain frozen mid-fall, and the river becomes a dark mirror doubling the whole scene. It is long-exposure work like this that made the caves world famous online, and the real thing is even stranger and quieter.
Visiting the Waitomo Glowworm Caves
The caves sit beneath rolling green farmland on the North Island, about two and a half hours south of Auckland. The name comes from the Māori words wai, meaning water, and tomo, meaning hole or shaft, which is about as literal as place names get. Guided tours have run here since 1889, after local Māori chief Tane Tinorau and English surveyor Fred Mace first explored the grotto by candlelight on a raft of flax stems.
The caves remain very much open to visitors today. You can drift silently beneath the glow worms on the classic boat tour through the Glowworm Grotto, walk the spiraling passages of Ruakuri, or float the underground river on an inner tube with a blackwater rafting trip. The lights never switch off, and no photograph fully prepares you for the hush of that first look up. Waitomo has earned its place among the world’s natural wonders, and Jeffers’ series belongs in any collection of breathtaking photography. For more journeys to improbable places, wander through our travel section.
Edited by Ben VanderVeen · About Moss & Fog
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Beautiful