Gabrielle was passing over the area on February 9, 2023, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired the first image above. Resuspension events of this size are rare at Bellona Plateau, with this being only the second time it has happened at this scale since the launch of the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite in 1999. The passing storm stirred up enough carbonate sediment to temporarily discolor more than 13,000 square kilometers of water, an area about the size of Puerto Rico. But Gabrielle’s winds were fierce enough that the storm left a clear sign of the carbonate ecosystem below the water. Signs of underwater reefs and carbonate platforms are often subtle in satellite imagery. It hosts reefs that teem with corals, coralline algae, mollusks, foraminifera, and many other types of marine life with calcium carbonate skeletons or shells. Once a sizable island during the Pleistocene ice ages, the plateau is now submerged under 25-50 meters of water. In February 2023, Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle churned south across the Coral Sea and passed over the Bellona Plateau-a shallow area 600 kilometers (400 miles) west of Grande Terre, the principal island of New Caledonia.

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