Phytoplankton
-
NASA
Blooming Seas Around the Chatham Islands
At about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of New Zealand’s South Island, the sparsely populated Chatham Islands are rugged, remote, and often inconspicuous. In January 2026, however, a ring of bright green and blue swirls in the ocean put a natural spotlight on the far-flung specks of land. A bloom of phytoplankton—tiny photosynthetic organisms that become visible to satellites when their…
Read More » -
NASA
Newly Minted Ph.D. Studies Phytoplankton with NASA’s FjordPhyto Project
FjordPhyto is a collective effort where travelers on tour expedition vessels in Antarctica help scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Universidad Nacional de La Plata study phytoplankton. Now project leader Dr. Allison Cusick has a Ph.D.! . Dr. Cusick studies how melting glaciers influence phytoplankton in the coastal regions. She wrote her doctoral dissertation based on the data collected by…
Read More »