The bloom on 13 August 2002

The large milky turquoise patch visible below the southern coast of Newfoundland, Canada, is a bloom of tiny algae called phytoplankton. Also seen in this image is a portion of Nova Scotia on the left side of the image.

This phytoplankton bloom was observed by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) on ESA’s Envisat satellite in a series of image acquisitions from 24 July to 13 August 2002.