Lena Delta is a zapovednik

This should be a "what is it?" mystery photo, because it looks ever so much like a photomicrograph of a polyp, but it is in fact a satellite view of the Lena River delta wildlife preserve ("zapovednik").

After discovering what it depicted, I wondered if the photo was color-enhanced in some way; the photo credit indicates that "This image was acquired by Landsat 7’s Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) sensor."

Here's a ?conventional satellite image, which also has impressive coloration, perhaps due to soil pigments in the delta or blooming vegetation.

Via The Conservation Report.