Kelp Talk

Odd wiggly line?

  • Quia by Quia

    Any ideas on what that line is? Coastline is to the north and roughly parallel to it. It looks like an oceanic feature rather than airborne. Something left by a boat?

    Posted

  • Quia by Quia

    Here's a few more of the same kind of line, within sight of a coastline. AKP000m877

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Good question. Flagging this for a scientist to respond. Let me know if we don't get a response in a few days... good eye!!

    Posted

  • jebyrnes by jebyrnes scientist

    Huh. Cool! I'm going to ping Tom and Kyle on this. Plankton front? Internal wave front? Huh.... Not sure.

    Posted

  • tombell by tombell scientist, translator

    Hi All,

    Well the item with the long white tail is probably a boat, but I would wager that the long tannish/green feature might be floating kelp that has been dislodged from a reef and is now a filament. I have seen this before on Landsat images soon after storms. The real issue with this quantifying it all, especially small rafts that cannot be distinguished easily with 30m pixels. Could be something else, floating debris of some sort.

    Posted

  • kyleccav by kyleccav scientist

    This is really interesting! I suspect that this is a debris or weed line created from converging ocean currents.

    example weed line

    sargasso line

    Posted

  • Quia by Quia

    Thanks for the up close perspective on what these things look like! Are these things worth tagging and collecting here on Talk? I don't know how rare they are, I saw the one and went 'that's odd, don't think I've seen that before' and then saw another the next day, making me think I might just not have noticed them before.

    Posted

  • Quia by Quia

    Spotted another one, this one's decidedly kelp-green

    AKP000m4sq

    Posted