Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think. ~Robert Henri

This is a photo of a Filamentous Bloom near Fiji. Taken from space, this photo from NASA’s Earth Observatory website shows bacteria and plankton, probably Trichodesmium, that “merge into great chains and mats that can be detected by satellites hundreds of miles up.”

from the webpage:

Charles Darwin offered an early description of Trichodesmium, which sailors often call “sea sawdust,” during his voyage aboard HMS Beagle in 1845:

…My attention was called to a reddish-brown appearance in the sea. The whole surface of the water, as it appeared under a weak lens, seemed as if covered by chopped bits of hay, with their ends jagged. These are minute cylindrical confervae, in bundles or rafts of from twenty to sixty in each…Their numbers must be infinite: the ship passed through several bands of them, one of which was about ten yards wide, and, judging from the mud-like colour of the water, at least two and a half miles long. In almost every long voyage some account is given of these confervae. They appear especially common in the sea near Australia…Captain Cook, in his third voyage, remarks, that the sailors gave to this appearance the name of sea-sawdust.

I love sea stories. For whatever reason, I am completely taken in, so much so that I almost can smell the saltwater.

Go check out that website. I am amazed every time I go there.