Almost 20 years ago, Oceanography published a short article entitled, “Satellite Ocean Color—Status Report” (Yoder et al., 1988). The article pointed out that the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) was launched 10 years previous and that during the subsequent years, the focus of the ocean color community was on understanding what the instrument was actually measuring, learning the limitations of the measurements, and developing techniques and methods to improve the accuracy and increase applications. The article concluded, “The next 10 years should see a large increase in the number of investigators, research programs and publications which take advantage of this important new data source for oceanography”. That remark has certainly proved to be accurate, and imagery from CZCS, OCTS (Ocean Color and Temperature Sensor), SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide-field-of-view Sensor), MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectrometer) and other satellite ocean color sensors are now being used for many applications in ocean science.

Yoder, J.A., and M.A. Kennelly. 2006. What have we learned about ocean variability from satellite ocean color imagers? Oceanography 19(1):152–171, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2006.98.

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