VIRS

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…