The black water around the Changjiang (Yangtze) Estuary in the spring of 2003

The Changjiang (Yangtze) Estuary is located in the East China Sea shelf with shallow water. Affected by the tide mixing and the runoff of the Changjiang River and the Qiantang River, the turbidity is very high. Generally, the water-leaving radiance is high in the turbid water because of the large particle scattering. Based on the in-situ data and ocean color remote sensing data of SeaWiFS, it was found that there was a black water region with the normalized water-leaving radiances less than 0.5 mW/(cm²·μm²·sr). The optical principle of the occurrence of this black water was analyzed by the inherent optical properties and the ocean color components. The results show that black water is caused by the relative low values of the suspended particle matter concentration and the back scattering ratio. In the black water region, the percentage of the phytoplankton absorption was relatively high, and the large size of the phytoplankton caused the low value of the particle backscattering ratio.