Mysterious Green Swirls Spotted Off Antarctic Coast

Hi to all,

Just found this curious article on OurAmazingPlanet.com
I put it here because its news about our planet, its mysterious and it is on Antarctic =)

Source

Late last month, a NASA satellite flying over East Antarctica spotted swirls of green off the Princess Astrid Coast that left experts wondering just what it was. Such a pattern usually indicates a bloom of tiny plantlike organisms called phytoplankton, which form the base of the ocean food chain. Such blooms are common along the Antarctic coast, but typically form in early December, in the austral spring, not so late in the summer season, according to experts consulted by NASA. "It doesn't look like a phytoplankton bloom to me," Stanford University marine biologist Kevin Arrigo, who led NASA's ICESCAPE expeditions to the Arctic in 2010 and 2011, told NASA. "The spatial pattern resembles the sea ice too closely. It looks suspiciously like green sea ice. Plus, it’s very late for such a bloom in the Antarctic."

It's an alien vortex opening up....

reply to post by quelmarth

Such blooms are common along the Antarctic coast, but typically form in early December, in the austral spring, not so late in the summer season, according to experts consulted by NASA.

Nice find, I think you have some more evidence of climate change. It's not the swirls themselves but the timing of the phytoplankton, about 4 months late.

Very interesting. Can't imagine the water being warm enough to support algae blooms there unless some type of underwater volcano was warming the region. I think they have to have at least 75 degrees f to survive. Nice topic!

Very interesting article, and as above more proof of climate change.

I'm surpriced of how fast they were able to sample this "green ice", a ship near by is a bit of luck.

Luckily, Lieser's colleagues aboard the vessel Aurora Australis were in a position to do just that.

Looks huge on that picture..

Awesome - thanks for posting. The world is full of wonders!

It could be just an algae bloom. Algae can survive in freezing cold water.

Algae can withstand boiling hot as well as freezing cold temperatures. Such algae can be found growing in hot springs, in snow-drifts or deep down inside polar ice.

www.naturegrid.org.uk...