Images
August 6, 2025 - Bloom in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
Tweet
The deep blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence were stained with swirls of bright colors in early August 2025. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on August 2.
The clouds of milky blue and green mark a large floating bloom of phytoplankton—microscopic plant-like organisms that live in these waters off of eastern Canada in relatively small number year-round. Given ideal water temperature, plentiful nutrients, and adequate sunlight, phytoplankton can reproduce explosively to produce colonies (“blooms”) so massive that they can easily be seen from space.
Phytoplankton blooms frequently occur in this location, in the large waterway off the east coast of Quebec, north of New Brunswick, and west of Newfoundland. The first blooms tend to occur in early spring, after winter’s retreating ice spills nutrients into the Gulf and sunlight reaches the water. The spring bloom tends to fade by summer, as the phytoplankton use up available nutrients. This late summer bloom began to show up in satellite imagery in early July and has expanded in size the last few weeks.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 8/2/2025
Resolutions:
1km (156.1 KB), 500m (344.5 KB), 250m (894.6 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
The deep blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence were stained with swirls of bright colors in early August 2025. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on August 2.
The clouds of milky blue and green mark a large floating bloom of phytoplankton—microscopic plant-like organisms that live in these waters off of eastern Canada in relatively small number year-round. Given ideal water temperature, plentiful nutrients, and adequate sunlight, phytoplankton can reproduce explosively to produce colonies (“blooms”) so massive that they can easily be seen from space.
Phytoplankton blooms frequently occur in this location, in the large waterway off the east coast of Quebec, north of New Brunswick, and west of Newfoundland. The first blooms tend to occur in early spring, after winter’s retreating ice spills nutrients into the Gulf and sunlight reaches the water. The spring bloom tends to fade by summer, as the phytoplankton use up available nutrients. This late summer bloom began to show up in satellite imagery in early July and has expanded in size the last few weeks.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 8/2/2025
Resolutions:
1km (156.1 KB), 500m (344.5 KB), 250m (894.6 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
