A short collection of nice ocean colour satellite images.
All three were captured by the MSI sensor onboard the Sentinel-2 Earth observation satellite from the European Space Agency. These are ‘true colour’ RGB images based on reflectance data in 3 spectral bands: Red: Band 4 (665 nm), Green: Band 3 (560 nm) and Blue: Band 2 (490 nm).
The Iroise sea in Brittany, France, on March 19th, 2026. The variations in water colour show the currents in a sea that is notoriously difficult to navigate.
A bloom of coccolithophores (maybe Gephyrocapsa huxleyi) off the coast of Norway, on June 15th, 2023. Each spring in the North Atlantic, proliferations of these phytoplanktonic organisms give the sea a milky aspect, due to strong light scattering by the coccoliths, the thin plates of calcite that cover their cells.
Another bloom of coccolithophores, in the North Sea near the Netherlands on May 26th, 2017. This time, the bloom hides under a thin lace of clouds.
All images were acquired and distributed by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus programme, and are under a CC BY 4.0 license.
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