14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency have just released this recent image of a massive phytoplankton bloom, discovered by a NASA satellite just off the coasts of Brazil last week. Blooms such as this are extremely important for oceanic food webs, scientists say.
The photograph above was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the NASA Aqua satellite, on January 13, 2014. It shows that the phytoplankton bloom extends for several hundred kilometers, on a north-to-south direction. You can see it as stretches of dark material in the deep blue of the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and using it for photosynthesis. They require significant amounts of nutrients such as iron to grow, and are able to store CO2 inside their small bodies once they die. The chemical is then stored at the bottom of the ocean.
Oceanic acidification would be an even larger problem than it is today if only small numbers of phytoplankton were to bloom every year. This phenomenon is produced by the extra CO2 amounts which cannot be stored at the ocean floor, and go on to interact with water, forming carbonic acid.