Photosynthetic accessory pigments - Evidence for the influence of phycoerythrin on the submarine light field

Abstract Oceanic phytoplankton chlorophyll is known to produce a very significant influence on the optical properties of the ocean. The chlorophyll-driven optical properties are in fact so strong as to allow global satellite mapping of the pigment concentration in the upper ocean using upwelled waterleaving radiances. In this paper, extensive experimental evidence is presented to strongly suggest that upwelled water-leaving spectral radiances (and therefore the submarine light field source) also include physical scattering and absorption effects of photosynthetic accessory pigments such as phycoerythrin. In the water column, the presence of phycoerythrin was measured over wide regions of the ocean using well-established airborne laser-induced spectral fluorescence techniques. Active-passive correlation spectroscopy methods revealed that concurrently measured water-leaving spectral radiances in the ∼ 600 nm spectral region were highly correlated with the laser-induced phycoerythrin pigment fluorescence. The analysis was performed on data sets in which the phycoerythrin and chlorophyll fluorescence were not coherent in order to permit the unambiguous evaluation of results.

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