As part of the GLOBEC NEP collaborative research project on the California Current (CC),
this was the second of two cruises in 2002 to study the physical and biological oceanographic
distributions and processes that influence juvenile salmonid habitat along the Oregon and northern
California coast. The 2002 cruises followed similar...
In eastern boundary current upwelling ecosystems, mesoscale circulation features such as eddies and upwelling filaments play a prominent role in the transfer of water and the associated plankton from the productive nearshore to the oligotrophic deep sea. The relationship between mesoscale circulation, zooplankton distributions, and the across-shelf transport of coastal...
Within systems characterized by substantial spatial and temporal variability, abundances of organisms tend to be higher in localized areas. Within the northern California Current system, the identification of such marine, biological hotspots would be of great importance to resource managers, conservationists, and research planners, and is consequently a growing area...
Three deep-sea subsurface moorings, each equipped with five current meters at depths from 150m below the surface to 200m above the bottom, were deployed off Northern California from September 1984 to July 1985 as part of the OPTOMA program. The triad of moorings, centered near 38.5°N, 125°W, had mutual separations...
The area near Point Arguello has long been recognized as a location of strong
upwelling. A tongue of biologically active waters was observed in the earliest studies of
this region (Sverdrup and Allen, 1939). More recently, satellite estimates of chlorophyll by
the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on Nimbus-7 have...
As part of the U. S. GLOBEC NorthEast Pacific Program we made repeated seasonal hydrographic surveys in the northern California Current system (Figure 1) between July 1997 and September 2003. These surveys included early spring sampling along a pair of hydrographic sections, one north (at 44.6ºN) and one south (at...
The effects of alongshore variability in topography (banks and capes) and spatial variability in the wind forcing, including the wind-stress curl, on coastal ocean circulation are studied using a combination of observations and model simulations. Satellite sea surface temperature observations are used to describe the seasonal evolution of temperature fronts...
The Oregon continental shelf waters are typically characterized by four to five major upwelling events that occur between May and October. The upwelled water is rich in nutrients, which fuels an increase in phytoplankton biomass. The onset of El Nino, however, can disrupt the normal physical processes along the Oregon...