Ocean Color Image Gallery

Mississippi River Plume

The Mississippi River and its distributaries modify the Gulf of Mexico more than any other river flowing into that body of water. This can be clearly seen in the above Aqua-MODIS image collected on January 27, 2015. The river brings huge quantities of suspended sediments and eutrophying nutrients to the northern Gulf from its very large watershed in the central United States.

Click on the above image for a view of most of the Gulf or get the full-resolution, 24-megabyte version.