The wordturquoisecomes from the French for “ Turkish Harlan F. Stone . ” But right now , the term depict nothing better than it does Turkey ’s most renowned consistence of urine , the Bosphorus Strait , where germ have transmit clouds of aquamarine waters twiddle into the feed water system all the fashion down to Istanbul — as you could see in the persona above — and out to the Sea of Marmara .
In May , NASA’sAqua satellitefirst espy the brilliant vortex in the Black Sea , where the Bosphorus originates .
From there , the promising heyday drifted all the style down to Istanbul , transform the strait — which divides Turkey into its Asian and European sides — from royal to galvanizing blue .
This is far from the first time these bright colors have appeared ; simulacrum from space have spotted them year after year in early summertime . This is last yr ’s salad days .
These luxurious , painterly sights are made potential by a type of phytoplankton called coccolithophores . These single - celled , plant - like , disk - shaped being live near the water ’s control surface .
Like full - size of it plants , coccolithophorestake in sunlight and other organisms ’ discarded food and deform them into solid food . They ’re an essential part of both the food for thought chain and the carbon copy cycle per second , help collect and go under excess carbon paper to the ocean floor .
Each soft coccolithophore is armored in a limestone shell , or coccolith . The shells reflect the sunshine back up through the water , producing a milky turquoise visible from space .
expert say that while larger and more frequentplankton bloomscan block sunlight at the water ’s surface and harm other organism , a modest one-year color change is no cause for concern . And this twelvemonth ’s show is especially brilliant .
