Six Year Look At NE Pacific Blooms
The series of satellite images below shows the plankton abundance during the month of August in our study region over the past 6 years. Note the super intense blooms in 2008 that resulted from the August 2008 Kasotochi Volcanic ash fall of more than a million tonnes of ash. Also note the natural blooms near shore that occur every year. The approximate area of the restored Village ocean pasture is bracketed in the 2012 image.
Notice also that near the shore there is always an abundance of plankton blooms. That’s because minerals wash off the land into the ocean, but those mineral micro-nutrients do not make it far offshore.
You can see the traditional and sovereign ocean pasture of the village of Old Massett which we restored last summer to levels of abundance of near shore waters as well as waters replenished and restored by the miracle of the Kasotochi Volcano in 2008.
