Covering the oceans in darkness…. Phytoplankton blooms produce some fascinating textures in E
Covering the oceans in darkness….Phytoplankton blooms produce some fascinating textures in Earth’s oceans, and consequently we’ve shared images of them taken from orbit many times (http://tinyurl.com/qhzwbr9, http://tinyurl.com/pwasxol). This bloom, however is a bit different from the others – in this photo from NASA’s Aqua satellite, it looks, well, black.This bloom is produced by an organism known as Myrionecta rubra, described as a ciliate protist. It’s not true phytoplankton since it doesn’t use the sun for energy and consequently it is showing up as a different color. Supposedly if viewed close-up, these waters appear red, but they are quite dark in this satellite photo. If you look close to the shoreline west of the dark bloom, you can in fact see a smaller, blue-green bloom with the more normal color expected from phytoplankton.Interestingly, you can almost certainly track the source of this bloom coming out of Guanabara Bay and the city of Rio de Janeiro. The normal ocean currents in this area should flow to the south along the coastline, controlled by the gyre pattern in the south Atlantic, exactly as seen here. Some sort of nutrient is enabling the growth of this organism and that nutrient is being carried south from the inhabited areas near Rio along the coastline.-JBBImage credit: NASAhttp://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=82968 -- source link
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