Detection of Phytoplankton Blooms in the Turbid Coastal Waters Using Satellite-Derived Fluorescence Line Height off Kakinada Coast

Fluorescence line height (FLH) is a relative measure of the amount of radiance leaving the sea surface in the chlorophyll fluorescence emission band. Satellite-derived FLH images provide information about the surface chlorophyll distribution which in turn can be used for monitoring surface phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters. The present study aims at observing a phytoplankton bloom in the Kakinada coastal waters along the east coast of India using n FLH product of MODIS-A. This quasi-permanent bloom could not be precisely observed using chlorophyll concentration in the turbid coastal waters due to the presence of other optically active constituents; hence, chlorophyll fluoresce is used to study the bloom phenomenon from n FLH product of MODIS. The analysis has been carried out by analysing the spectral variability using both in situ and satellite R rs spectra over the bloom and non-bloom waters. Comparative study between in situ chlorophyll with satellite-derived FLH showed a good correlation with an R 2 of 0.43. The bloom phenomenon observed/assessed from the MODIS n FLH data showed > 0.25 W m −2 sr −1 μm in the bloom-dominated pixels. This proves that the satellite-derived n FLH can also be used as an indicator in detecting the phytoplankton blooms and also as one of the important parameters for the ocean colour applications in case-II waters.