Ocean color massive sediment load. The most important light-absorbing substance in the oceans is chlorophyll, which phytoplankton use to produce carbon by photosynthesis. Chlorophyll, a green pigment, makes phytoplankton preferentially absorb the red and blue portions of the light spectrum and reflect green light. Ocean regions with high concentrations of phytoplankton have shades of blue-green depending upon the type and density of the phytoplankton population there. The basic principle behind the remote sensing of ocean color from space is that the more phytoplankton is in the water, the greener it is. There are other substances that may be found dissolved in the
Light-harvesting complex phycoerythrin subunits that radiate out from this center like thin tubes. This increases the surface area of the absorbing section and helps focus and concentrate light energy down into the reaction center to a Chlorophyll. The energy transfer from excited electrons absorbed by pigments in the phycoerythrin subunits at the periphery of these antennas appears at the reaction center in less than 100 ps. Light-harvesting complex A light-harvesting complex has a complex of subunit proteins that may be part of a larger supercomplex of a photosystem, the functional unit in photosynthesis. It is used by plants and photosynthetic bacteria to