In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

In this lesson, students investigate and identify various phytoplankton using images that were previously taken with a compound microscope.  Credit:  This lesson is modified from a lesson of the same name created by The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education&nbsp

Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology. 

These six graphs show Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations from 1998 - 2018 in a variety of locations: East Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, California Coast, Southeastern US/Gulf of Mexico, Northeastern US and the Scotian Shelf, and the Hawaiian Islands.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Water Quality protocol bundle. 

This resource helps to identify and access GLOBE protocols and hands-on learning activities that complement the Phytoplankton Distribution phenomenon.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Oceans protocol bundle. 

Be a Scientist: The GLOBE Program encourages you to use GLOBE data to help answer questions about how the environment works.  Through research projects, you can answer your own science questions by creating hypotheses, analyzing data, drawing conclusions, and sharing your results.  Scientific projects that you conduct and that include the use of GLOBE data or protocols can be submitted by your teacher for publication on this GLOBE website. By sharing your findings with the rest of the world you are completing the scientific process.