Last month, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this amazing Overview of a swirling green phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic Sea. Blooms like this spread across the northern basins of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans every summer, often spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Scientists believe these blooms to be cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae — an ancient marine bacteria that captures and stores solar energy through photosynthesis.