Remote sensing of a pigment patch in the southeastern Bering Sea

As a component of a NOAA program studying lower trophic level dynamics in the southeastern Bering Sea, 7 flights were performed in a NOAA P3 aircraft over the southeastern Bering Sea during April and May, 1996, collecting ocean color data with a multichannel radiometer. A research vessel operating on the Bering Sea shelf found a patch of increased chlorophyll concentration at approximately 56 degrees N, 166 degrees W. The increased chlorophyll concentration was clearly noticeable during subsequent overflights, both visually and in the real-time radiometer data One flight was dedicated to delineating patch size. By then the patch had grown to be approximately 100 by 200 km in size, oriented roughly NW-SE, just southeast of the Pribilof islands, tracking SE to NW. On April 28 96 the patch edge passed over a bio-physical mooring equipped with in situ spectral absorption meters and fluorometers. Estimates of pigment concentration at this mooring, increased 12 fold in 6 hours with the passage of the feature. A drifter monitoring ocean color released near the mooring also detected the patch.