Having tested their mettle in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, automated sea gliders are deployed in polar-opposite conditions to investigate short-lived phytoplankton blooms

There are neither green plants in Antarctica nor macro-algae in the surrounding waters, says Vernon Asper, a marine science professor at the University of Southern Mississippi's (U.S.M.) Department of Marine Science at the NASA Stennis Space Center. "Essentially, everything that eats, lives and breathes in Antarctica is fed from phytoplankton in the ocean."

These blooms, which turn the sea from deep blue to lush green, begin sometime in November in a large polynya (an opening in the ice) in the Ross Sea when the liquid water is exposed to sunlight. The heat stratifies the sea surface in this roughly 160- by 320-kilometer area. (Its expanse varies from year to year.) This allows microscopic phytoplankton to flourish.

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