  We develop a novel technique to exploit the extensive data sets provided by
underwater neutrino telescopes to gain information on bioluminescence in the
deep sea. The passive nature of the telescopes gives us the unique opportunity
to infer information on bioluminescent organisms without actively interfering
with them. We propose a statistical method that allows us to reconstruct the
light emission of individual organisms, as well as their location and movement.
A mathematical model is built to describe the measurement process of underwater
neutrino telescopes and the signal generation of the biological organisms. The
Metric Gaussian Variational Inference algorithm is used to reconstruct the
model parameters using photon counts recorded by the neutrino detectors. We
apply this method to synthetic data sets and data collected by the ANTARES
neutrino telescope. The telescope is located 40 km off the French coast and
fixed to the sea floor at a depth of 2475 m. The runs with synthetic data
reveal that we can reliably model the emitted bioluminescent flashes of the
organisms. Furthermore, we find that the spatial resolution of the localization
of light sources highly depends on the configuration of the telescope. Precise
measurements of the efficiencies of the detectors and the attenuation length of
the water are crucial to reconstruct the light emission. Finally, the
application to ANTARES data reveals the first precise localizations of
bioluminescent organisms using neutrino telescope data.
