Nearly every summer, phytoplankton trace the sea’s currents, eddies, and flows.
Nearly every summer, colorful blooms of phytoplankton flourish in the Baltic Sea. And nearly every summer, satellite images detect art-like patterns as the phytoplankton trace the sea’s currents, eddies, and flows. But like the whorls of fingerprints, no two phytoplankton blooms are exactly alike.
These natural-color images, acquired on August 15, 2020, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, show a late-summer phytoplankton bloom swirling in the Baltic Sea. The images feature part of a bloom located between Öland and Gotland, two islands off the coast of southeast Sweden. Note the dark, straight lines crossing the detailed image: these are the wakes of ships cutting through the bloom.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
