Because of its orbit and the way it scans our planet, MODIS often sees the sun reflected in the ocean's surface. This is referred to as sun glint. If the oceans were untroubled by waves, the glint would only appear when MODIS scanned the Earth in the direction of the sun and at the same angle of incidence. Earth's winds, however, raise waves on the ocean that change the orientation of its reflecting surface and thereby spread out the specularly reflected sunlight to more directions than a waveless ocean would. The result in MODIS imagery is a long, roughly elliptical bright region parallel to the satellite's ground track and centered on the sub-solar latitude which moves north and south with the seasons.
It turns out that radio waves are also reflected differently by a wind-roughened sea surface. Sensors such as QuikSCAT use this effect to determine wind speed and direction over the sea surface. The diagram below shows QuikSCAT wind speeds and directions at a local time of around 6 AM (small yellow arrows) and 6 PM (small magenta arrows) on the same day that the underlying MODIS scene was collected. (Wind speed is proportional to arrow size.) What you notice, as you move along the brightened sun glint region that runs roughly vertically through the image, is that the measured wind speeds gradually decrease to very low levels and then increase again. In the region of minimal winds, most of the sunlight reflected from the un-wind-ruffled surface passes to the south of MODIS (see the larger arrows); the reduction in sun glint makes it possible to see the blue light upwelling from beaneath the surface. Farther north and south, the stronger winds roughen the surface which then directly reflects much incoming sunlight at an angle back to MODIS -- once again obscuring the lower intensity light coming from beneath the surface. (Note that the relative positions of sun and sensor are important here. It is also possible for calm areas to reflect more sun glint than windier areas.)
The sea surface temperature is also likely affected by the same wind field, albeit in a different manner.