Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
Eddies are an important nexus between physical oceanography and marine biology because these giant swirling tornadoes of seawater are pervasive in the world's oceans. Passing eddies can accelerate local currents, retain and transport plankton and nutrients, enhance open water productivity, and stimulate fast, deep sinking. Quasi-permanent eddies can retain larvae in the lee of an island, for example. Eddies are easily detectible by satellites. Important charismatic megavertebrates like sea turtles, elephant seals, blue whales, and sperm whales seem to track these pelagic features, presumably because they aggregate prey species.
A recent article in Geophysical Research Letters from Gilberto Jeronimo and Jose Gomez-Valdes at Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) in Mexico reports that some deep eddies can go undetected by satellite, because they remain submerged. Notice you can't see one in the NOAA sea surface temperature image above. ; )
The researchers conducted a 21-day hydrographic survey in the southern region of the California Current, and observed for the first time a subsurface anticyclonic (warm core) eddy off northern Baja California with the same water mass characteristics as the California Undercurrent. The core of the eddy was quasi-circular with radii of 35 km and thickness of 250 m.
The abstract is here.
Comments
But could we harvest the water from the eddy and sell it?
Posted by: CR McClain | April 10, 2007 10:10 AM
It's a warm core eddy, so it's downwelling. We should look for a cold core eddie that's upwelling, and poke it with a giant straw mounted on the CHIKYU. Once the water starts coming up into warmer surface, it should expand due to cabeling.
Posted by: Peter Etnoyer | April 10, 2007 10:25 AM