File:Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea (MODIS 2016-07-10).jpg

English: Brilliant milky blues and greens graced the waters of the Barents Sea in early July 2016, marking the prolific growth of a summer phytoplankton bloom. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured this true-color image on July 7.

The Barents Sea is a shallow sea sandwiched between northern Russia and Scandinavia and the islands of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya. In this image, Yuzhny Island sits in the northeast and Russia's Murmansk Oblast sits in the south. At the far western tip of the mainland the rugged coastline of northern Norway can be seen.

Within the shallow basin of the Barents Sea, currents carrying warm, salty water from the Atlantic collide with currents carrying cold, fresher water from the Arctic. The bloom is made up of tiny microscopic, chlorophyll-containing organisms called phytoplankton. Present in these waters year-round, they are normally found in small numbers. When conditions are right - the correct amount of sunlight, water temperature and nutrients - phytoplankton begin to multiply rapidly and form huge blooms which can easily be seen from space.