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...
Eight years (1994-2000) of data from the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimeter
are used to investigate the variability of the sea surface height and geostrophic
velocity of the California Current system. The TOPEX/Posiedon satellite measures
SSH along an exact-repeat set of groundtracks with a 10-day repeat cycle.
In the domain studied here...
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...
Small pelagic fish represent a critical trophic link between plankton and large predators in marine upwelling ecosystems such as the California Current System. Populations of these fish are highly variable over time and are characterized by extreme fluctuations in abundance, which have significant ecosystem impacts. The causes driving
this instability...
Nearshore hypoxia within the Northern California Current (NCC) system is a seasonal phenomenon caused by coastal upwelling and occurs mainly during late-summer and early fall. The effects of low oxygen levels on fish and invertebrate communities, particularly during early-life history stages, however, are poorly known for this area. I investigated...
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 wind forcing on coastal ocean circulation are studied using a
numerical modeling approach. The first region of interest is on the North Carolina
shelf, where the Coastal Ocean Processes (CoOP) Inner Shelf Study (ISS) took place
during August - November 1994. ISS observations are used to initialize,...
Euphausia pacifica, the North Pacific krill, is a key grazer in the California Current System and an important prey item for consumers such as salmon, seabirds, and whales. As a crucial link between phytoplankton and higher trophic levels, it is essential to understand both the behavior and bioenergetics of this...
Wind-driven coastal upwelling brings subsurface water onto the central-Oregon shelf after the spring transition each year. This cold and salty source water is oxygen-poor, yet above the hypoxic threshold, dissolved oxygen < 1.4 ml l⁻¹. Once on the shelf, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations of upwelled near-bottom waters are modified by...
Dynamic marine environments can shape complex spatial and temporal patterns in the population connectivity of marine species, and this is often exemplified in species with long larval phases. Here, we used a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach to examine fine-scale spatial and temporal genomic variation among Dungeness crab Cancer magister larval recruits...
The California Current Ecosystem (CCE) is a dynamic marine ecosystem from which many socioeconomically important fisheries species are harvested. Here, a genotyping- by-sequencing (GBS) approach was used to examine genomic variation in an early life stage (megalopae) of the Dungeness crab (Cancer magister), which constitutes the most valuable single-species commercial...
MOCNESS plankton tows, sediment traps and sedimentary material are used to determine
the linkage between bio-physical forcing and foraminiferal response over a range of time
scales from the event scale to the glacial interglacial cycle. The annually averaged planktic
foraminiferal fauna of the modem California Current is a diverse community...
A method is described for determining the absolute dynamic topography of the sea surface. Using hydrographic and wind data obtained in 1963, the surface topography and the horizontal and vertical mass transports off the southeast Arabian coast during the summer monsoon are calculated. As indicated by the calculations, upwelling occurs...