Sometimes, the grim reapers within the natural world consequently serve the greater good. In this case, the dealer of death is a simple yet ostensibly potent dinoflagellate. “There’s a ‘ruthless predator’ in the ocean that harpoons its prey,” foments the ever-trusted BBC’s Wildlife Magazine , relishing in suspenseful delivery that “It’s not a shark, a squid, or even an ambush predator like the venomous stonefish but a type of predatory plankton called Polykrikos kofoidii.” Sharks, squid, and stonefish, scuttle aside. This little yet well-appendaged plankton wheels and deals under the cover of night aided only by its own built-in flickering glow, harpooning the toxic algae that fuels Southern California’s red tides and swallowing them whole. Marine biologists at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography recently collected water samples from beneath Scripps Pier in La Jolla, and while investigating the peculiar, full-body bioluminescence of P.…