2021 In the Field Student Winner: Watercolors Painted with Primary Productivity

Photo by Clark Morgan, graduate student, FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

The surface colors of estuary outflows through a manmade inlet in St. Lucie County paint a beautifully painful picture of the intersection of natural and anthropogenic forces. First, we see the turquoise blue waters of the warm subtropical Atlantic Ocean, with a harsh line discerning the tidal flux of nutrient packed inshore waters. Unfortunately, the nutrients contributing to primary productivity of plankton at the base of the food chain and vitally important for biogeochemical processes, are murked with the runoff of human development. However, streaks of orange and red suggest that life supporting processes are also occurring in the mix of stratified sediment.