Snow Algae
Base H - Signy Island Antarctica

  ©Copyright D. Allsop - picture taken 1980 / 1981

Snow algae. A species of Chlamydomonas (actually a “green” alga) showing its prominent red pigment as it grows on snow, utilising wind-blown nutrients from  penguin colonies.

Red snow close-up, the phenomenon was relatively short-lived, largely as the icy substrate that the algae lived in was at once the source of melt water and dissolved nutrients that helped cause the algal bloom and also the cause of the algae being swept away as it melted.