There have been reports of mysterious white spots off the Bahamas Islands for around a hundred years. They appear sporadically, seeming to appear and disappear out of nowhere, and collectively cover an area the size of a few hundred soccer fields. Only one thing is unclear: where the spots come from and what their meaning is.
Scientists now wanted to get to the bottom of the cause of the spots and conducted several investigations. The first sampled it: The white spots are fine-grained calcium carbonate floating above the Bahamas banks.
For the second research, the scientists used NASA satellite images from a period from 2003 to 2020. They then analyzed the photos with the help of artificial intelligence. The result was surprising news: there has been a “mysterious increase” in white discoloration over the past decade, peaking in 2015. In addition, the discolorations appeared to develop seasonal patterns, as the researchers reported in their study in “Remote Sensing of Environment.”
The amazing thing: the researchers had actually expected only a slow change. “In a changing climate with decreasing pH (i.e. ocean acidification) and increasing temperature, one would expect a slow, continuous change in whiteness,” said Chuanmin Hu, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida and co-author of the study.
“The former would theoretically lead to a decrease in events, while the latter would lead to an increase in events,” he added. “However, what we observed came as a real surprise because there was a 10-year increase in white discoloration.”
However, the study still does not offer an exact explanation for the white spots. The researchers now want to conduct further investigations to discover the cause. Speculations so far have ranged from the sporadic blooming of microorganisms in the ocean to a connection with currents.
Sources: NASA, “Vice”
