I am entering my final semester of a a Master's program.

The main component is a 6 month research project.

Marine phytoplankton are the base of the marine food web and play a key role in the ocean carbon cycle.  These single cell plants found in the upper layers of the global oceans.
The main factors affecting phytoplankton growth are sunlight, water movement, temperature and nutrients. Phytoplankton, in turn impacts all marine trophic levels, atmosphere carbon levels and ocean acidity. Monitoring and quantifying phytoplankton assists scientists in understand, and model, marine ecosystems and climate change.

The scale of the oceans, means in-situ monitoring, with the temporal and spatially density required for statistically significance is not feasible. Satellite remote sensing can provide this level coverage, a number of ocean colour sensors, such as MODIS, MERIS, and SeaWiFS have been deployed.

Chlorophyl, is a suitable measurement indicator of the amount of phytoplankton, in the ocean. Algorithms which model chlorophyl level in open water (Class 1) from ocean color sensor are have been established. These algorithms do not perform well in optical complex water and coastal water. Optically complex water contains active sediment and nutrients components, which contribute to response in the same wavelength range as the chlorophyl, utilise in the open water algorithms.