JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The International Space Station flew over Florida Tuesday and captured a video of Northeast Florida.
And it looks like something is in the water off the First Coast.
ISS Above tweeted the video with a message, Hello City of Jax. This is you at 3:57 pm today… from 260 miles up when the Space Station was passing by.
The video shows a blueish green streak in the ocean. When asked what it was, the ISS Above tweeted: That's most likely Algae Bloom. We need some oceanographer to be 100% certain - but from other views like this seen worldwide, that's what I believe it most likely is.
So First Coast News put out feelers.
Matt Brown is an oceanographer and professor at Flagler College.
"I’m going to start with... I’m not 100 percent certain," he said.
He thinks it could potentially be an algal bloom or "the effluent or the trail of a boat and or a plane."
He added that "you wouldn’t expect to get algal blooms in February. It’s winter. The water is cold."
We’ll come back to him in a moment.
Can an algal bloom even be detected from space? Bill Nelson with the National Weather Service told us, "Yes. Algae blooms can be detected remotely by things like satellites. Red tide is a lot more common on the Gulf Coast rather than the Atlantic Coast here."
First Coast News Meteorologist Tim Deegan said he has actually seen this kind of discoloration in the ocean before.
"Right, every day for as long as we’ve had good satellite pictures," Deegan noted.
He pulled out a satellite image from Tuesday, and more of that same blueish green color could be seen all around the state.
Pointing to that satellite image, "You see how that coloration is like what we see along the west gulf coast of Florida. That’s all shallow water. The dark water is the warmer water."
Deegan said the discoloration on this kind of satellite image is actually something called a thermocline.
"If you were to dive into where you see the color, you’d have a difference in water temperature than where you didn’t’ see the color. That water color difference, that temperature difference is a density difference, and it traps life in it."
Todd Osborne with the University of Florida Whitney Marine Lab said if it is indeed an algal bloom it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. It can be natural if strong winds stir up deeper nutrient-rich waters.
Back to oceanographer Matt Brown. He then pulled up a different kind of satellite image from Tuesday as well. This imagery shows algal biomass levels. The redder the area, the more algal biomass in the water.
Comparing the ISS video to the algal biomass satellite map, Brown saw a bright red area. It was not in the same geographic spot as the blueish-green streak on the ISS video. However, that small red area is level with the tip of the streak.
So what is it?
Brown said, "It could be an algal bloom." However, he says that’s odd because usually they come up from the south.
So in the end, there are different answers about what that discoloration is, as seen from space.
