The North Atlantic Ocean has transformed into a mass of colorful space that looks like a Vincent Van Gogh piece. This phenomenon is caused by a boom of phytoplankton in the area.
NASA released an image snapped by a weather satellite called Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership on Sep. 23, 2015. In order to create this picture, NASA combined data from the red, green and blue infrared bands. NASA then added data about the levels of chlorophyll.
"The image does a beautiful job of showing the close link between ocean physics and biology," Oregon State University's Michael Behrenfeld, a phytoplankton expert, said in a statement. "The features that jump out so clearly represent the influence of ocean eddies and physical stirring on the concentration of phytoplankton pigments and, possibly, colored dissolved organic matter."
Phytoplankton bloom in spring and summer. They display their colors in fall. Cloud formations usually cover these sights. Fortunately for this year, the satellite was able to find a gap between the clouds to get an image.
Phytoplankton is the ocean's basic foundation in terms of food web. They feed both large and small sea creatures from whales to shrimps, from snails to jellyfish. The phytoplankton also float near the surface of the ocean to get sunlight. Other chemicals that they need are nitrates, phosphates and sulfur. They turn these into proteins, fats and carbohydrates. It is not always colorful when phytoplankton get too many nutrients and their growth gets out of control, these harmful algal blooms (HABs) can actually be harmful and produce toxic compounds that harm fish, shellfish, mammals, birds and people.
"A lot of what we don't know about ocean ecology has to do with the difficulty of sampling the ocean, whether it be from a storm-tossed ship or from a cloud-obstructed satellite," Norman Kuring, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's resident ocean scientist, added.
