Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. They have found a phytoplankton or algal bloom beneath ice in the Arctic. The crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, in the midst of their ICESCAPE mission. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Brilliant shades of blue and green explode across the Barents Sea in this natural-color image taken on August 14, 2011, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite. The color was created by a massive bloom of phytoplankton that are common in the area each August.
The terrain for the scientific work conducted by ICESCAPE scientists on July 4, 2010, was Arctic sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea. Image Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen
