Anomalous Blooms in the Tropical South Pacific

What's This?

I recently had cause to use the composite of all of the chlorophyll measurements made by the Aqua-MODIS mission. When I looked at the image, a feature in the tropical South Pacific Ocean caught my eye (see the extract on the right). My first thought was that the toad-like feature image of a toad was some sort of processing artifact. Perhaps I could determine if it came from one particular year.

Aqua-MODIS mission-length composite

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