REMEMBER those early days of enhanced community quarantine, when social media exploded with images of a suddenly very green-blue Manila Bay?
“Turquoise,” viral social media posts called the phenomenon.
Some said it was pollution. Others said it was algal bloom.
Now, satellite data weighs in on what could be a definitive answer.
Researchers from the Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (or STAMINA4Space) Program — a space organization under the Department of Science and Technology — analyzed images taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites.
What did these eyes in the sky reveal?
“Using the spaceborne images, researchers were able to estimate the chlorophyll-a concentration and water turbidity in the area from March 13 to March 28,” wrote the researchers on the PHL-Microsat’s site on Medium. They revealed their findings publicly today, April 15.
March 13 to March 28 was the time period when the Manila Bay images went viral. Water turbidity — or how murky a liquid is — is a possible sign of pollution. Cholorophyll-a, meanwhile, could be a sign of algal bloom.
The researchers found that turbidity nearly doubled from March 23 to March 25. But chlorophyll-a levels, while still high, remained relatively flat.
Therefore, they wrote, “the change of water color could not be attributed to algal bloom.”
They identified two hotspots (outlined in red in the satellite image): Pasig River and Bacoor Bay. These areas have high levels of aquaculture, industrial, residential, and commercial activity, and “the waters from these areas possibly influenced the waters of its neighboring Manila Bay.”
The STAMINA4Space Program is the successor of the PHL-Microsat Program, the country’s first foray into developing small satellites. Diwata-1, the country’s first microsatellite that recently ended an illustrious 4-year mission, was a brainchild of the program.
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