When satellites passed over South Australia’s Bonney Coast in January 2024, they captured images showing splotches of blue and green swirling through surface waters.
When satellites passed over South Australia’s Bonney Coast in January 2024, they captured images showing splotches of blue and green swirling through surface waters. These colorful filaments of phytoplankton were blooming right on time. The microscopic plant-like organisms thrive here in the summer, when cold, nutrient-rich water wells up from deep in the ocean.
This image, captured by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) sensor aboard the Suomi NPP satellite, shows an elongated bloom on January 10, 2024. Images collected by NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellite shows the bloom first becoming visible from space in late December 2023.
“The green filament is definitely a phytoplankton bloom extending along the shelf break, which is around 150 meters deep,” said Jochen Kaempf, a Flinders University oceanographer who has published several studies about phytoplankton in this area. “The bluer signal could be sediment located in very shallow water or perhaps a different phytoplankton species.”
Read More: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Wanmei Liang NASA Earth Observatory
