Contribution of remote sensing products to the management of offshore aquaculture at Sagres, SW Portugal

Remote sensing can address important issues affecting offshore aquaculture such as prediction of Harmful Algal Blooms. In situ data for nutrients, chlorophyll a (Chla) and phytoplankton community from a site for long-line aquaculture for bivalves off the SW coast of Portugal has been compared during a period of upwelling with remote sensing data for Chla, sea surface temperature, salinity, direction and intensity of both currents and winds. On the 11th February the in situ nutrients levels were high and the Chla was low, but by the 12th March the converse was the situation. The evolution of this event could be followed by combining remote sensing and model data from a variety of open source web sites made available by the Earth Observation provider that demonstrated clearly the lags between the physical forcings promoting upwelling and the eventual blooms of phytoplankton