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Ocean Color Image Gallery

Ocean Color Image Gallery

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Sounds of the Sea - Kamchatka Peninsula

This is a frozen moment in time - a transect across a beautiful swirling eddy off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Western Bering Sea, as seen from MODIS-Aqua. We are well-accustomed to seeing stunning visualizations of ocean color features, but now we can hear them too. Ryan Vandermeulen, a scientist at the Ocean Ecology Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, worked alongside with his brother to develop an online program that merges ocean color data with musical notes. The goal is to give onlookers an immersive experience into the ocean imagery Goddard scientists study everyday in an effort to understand the complexities of a large, changing ecosystem. The melody created from the eddies in this image corresponds directly to the intensity of red (Rrs-667/flute), green (Rrs-547/harp), and blue (Rrs-443/upright bass) spectral ocean reflectance data. Listen closely as the colors harmonize and diverge, manifesting the natural patterns created by microscopic life in the ocean.

The above view of phytoplankton blooms in the western Bering Sea along the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula was collected by Aqua/MODIS on May 15, 2021.