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Hitchhiker's Guide to Ocean Currents
FOLLOWING THE SWEEP and surge of ocean currents in real time.
The coastal ocean is full of tiny hitchhikers, their glassine alien bodies perfectly designed to drift with the surface current in a lazy dance, a pas de deux where the ocean takes the lead. All these travelers—from the weird horned larvae of the Dungeness crab to the large-eyed smolt of anadromous salmon and trout—are largely helpless against these surface currents, dependent on wind and waves to carry them to just the right nursery areas where they can feed and grow. For scientists eager to understand the secrets of marine life histories, accurate real-time information about the sweep and surge of the ocean's topmost layers is critical—but maddeningly difficult to obtain.
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Conservation magazine is published by the Society for Conservation Biology
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