Why are upwellings important

The deeper water that rises to the surface during upwelling is rich in nutrients. Upwelling can also play an important role in the movement of marine animals. Deep ocean water is more nutrient-rich than surface water simply because things nutrients, plankton carcasses, fish carcasses in the ocean sink. Currents Tutorial Winds blowing across the ocean surface often push water away from an area. When this occurs, water rises up from beneath the surface to replace the diverging surface water.

This process is known as upwelling. During upwelling, wind-displaced surface waters are replaced by cold, nutrient-rich water that wells up from below. Figure modified by D.

Reed from image by J. Wallace and S. Download image jpg, 43 KB. The whole system does not respond instantaneously to wind; the pathway from wind to whales takes time.

But how much time is required for each step? How long after a strong wind event can we expect aggregations of feeding blue whales? These are some of the questions I am trying to tackle. For example, we hypothesize that some of the mechanisms and their respective lag times can be sketched out as follows:.

All of these questions involve integrating oceanography, satellite imagery, wind data, and lag times, leading me to delve into many different analytical approaches including time series analysis and predictive modeling. If we are able to understand the lag times along this series of events leading to blue whale feeding opportunities, then we may be able to forecast blue whale occurrence in the STB based on the current wind and upwelling conditions.

Upwelling regions are often measured by their productivity due to the influx of nutrients to the surface mixed layer and euphotic zone sunlit layer by upwelling currents. This drives photosynthesis of phytoplankton tiny alga , which form the base of the ocean food web. Some of the most important upwelling regions are along the coasts of continents. In these coastal upwelling regions, surface winds push water away from the shore and create a divergence at the coast, which is replaced by water from depth.

For coastal upwelling to occur, the wind must be parallel to the coast because water is deflected to the left of the wind in the southern hemisphere, and the right of the wind in the northern hemisphere.

This deflection is due to the Coriolis force which causes objects travelling in a straight line appear to curve or deflect due to the rotation of the earth.