Ocean Color Image Gallery

Blooms around Kamchatka

The volcanically active Kamchatka Peninsula separates two biologically active bodies of water this time of year. Green (and in some places slightly reddish) swirls of phytoplankton fill the surface waters of the northwest Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea in the above MODIS image collected on May 23, 2013. (Click on the above image for higher resolution.)

A broader (3.6 megabyte) view shows that similar blooms are even more widespread in the Sea of Okhotsk on the western side of the peninsula.