Ocean Color Image Gallery

Crozet Islands

The Crozet Islands are remote and surrounded by some of the roughest seas on the planet. Those seas are home to a recently discovered new type of killer whale, and they support what was reported to be the world's largest king penguin colony before it suffered a mysterious, massive decline in population.

When the clouds occasionally clear, we can derive some information about the phytoplankton that support these remote inhabitants of Earth from ocean color sensors such as MODIS on the Aqua spacecraft. The above image was collected on March 6, 2019. Click on it to get a larger version.