Check this out!
Here's a stunning jaw-dropping website and image for those of you interested
into some follow-up to observations and comment I posted way back, now
cyber-years ago (8/10/97), regarding the eerie aqua-green water in Bristol
Bay and the Bering Sea (Alaska) this summer and still currently present. The
satellite image is best viewed in color as it is displayed in "real" color!

http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/IMAGES/SEAWIFS_GALLERY.html

Enter the website, then scroll down, find, and click on "Plankton Bloom in
the Bering Sea". There are interesting links to other NASA images as well,
e.g. the smoke plumes over Indonesia, upwellings off Cape Town, etc.

On 8/19/97, I wrote, in part:
"....Incredible weather during the first half -- often flat becalmed
mirror-like Beaufort 00 with nary a ripple from horizon to horizon in an
extensive area of eerie and bizarre aurora-aqua green water (looked like an
over chlorinated swimming pool) which no one can seem to explain at the
moment, except that it was warmer (59F / 12.3C) and less saline than
surrounding sea water outside this visually well marked and extensive zone
-- maybe a dome of plankton soup and pack ice melt(?) ...but if so, why
'warmer'? ...or run-off, but from where? -- there are no large rivers or
glacial drainage feeding into that area to create a feature as vast as this,
but it was in just these waters where the greatest concentrations of large
whales and Harbor Porpoise were including the Right Whales and that
unexpected group of White-sided Dolphins. Anyway, after analysis of water
samples and a little more investigation, we should get it sorted out
eventually. This water was so pale and bizarre that it reflected off the
overcast, creating a feature reminiscent to "ice blink" of polar ice edge,
but here, turning the clouds aqua and horizon a purple haze. With 80,000+
hours at sea over the past 25 years, I've never seen anything like it. This
was so weird with a greasy feel as to border on nauseating at times....."

Well, the analysis has happened it' has been sorted out. Turns out this is a
_Coceolithophores_ phytoplankton bloom, apparently quite rare in the Bering,
as I've been told, and more the result of localized solar heating of the sea
surface water due to persistent High Pressure locked over the area in July,
rather than just flat out ENSO (El Nino). This does not necessarily dismiss
ENSO completely from perhaps being a contributing factor in the High Pressure
anomaly from developing in the first place.

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
~4734'N, 12208'W