Satellites Spotted a Strange Glow in the Ocean, and Scientists Have a Wild Explanation

"The team ventured into the rough ocean waters on board a research vessel, taking detailed measurements at various depths to collect data that satellite images can't provide. "Satellites only see the top several meters of the ocean, but we were able to drill down with multiple measurements at multiple depths," said Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences senior research scientist Barney Balch in a statement about the research."

"To their surprise, they found that coccolithophores did, in fact, live in the frigid waters where no one thought they could survive - albeit in much smaller concentrations than in the great calcite belt. In the process, they got an unprecedented peek at how the ocean's carbon cycles function. Coccolithophores are caught in a massive war with another type of plankton, called diatoms, which turn organic carbon into energy, a vital source of food for marine life."

"The patch itself, however, has been considered far too frigid to support these tiny plankton, causing a longstanding marine mystery. The border between the great calcite belt and the mysterious turquoise region was previously seen as a kind of no man's land between these two factions of plankton. But the researchers' findings suggest that "moderate concentrations of plated coccolithophores and detached coccoliths were observed south of the great calcite belt all the way to 60°S," the paper reads."

Coccolithophores and detached coccoliths occur south of the great calcite belt, extending to about 60°S, and produce a gleaming turquoise patch visible by satellite. The patch appears in frigid Antarctic waters previously assumed too cold for these calcifying plankton, but coccolithophores persist in moderate, lower concentrations compared with the calcite belt. Ship-based sampling at multiple depths revealed organisms and detached plates beneath the surface layers that satellites cannot detect. The presence of coccolithophores influences carbon cycling by competing with diatoms that convert organic carbon into energy, creating a dynamic boundary between coccolithophore-dominated and diatom-dominated regions.

Read at Futurism