Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Amazing photograph...

[Lew Clayman <lew_clayman@yahoo.com>]

--- Coalbunny <coalbunny@onewest.net> wrote:
> Mike I'm confused.  Of course, I havn't been to the ocean enought o be
> able to know this, but how is the water in northern latitudes darker
> than that at latitudes closer to the equator?
> Carl

Not really northern vs southern, more like North Atlantic vs Caribean.

North Atlantic waters are teeming with plankton, hence greenish and cloudy. 
Don't ask me the biology behind this, I know only that it is so.  Caribean
waters are clear and lack large amounts of microscopic life.

I've been told that the darkest, most densely "planktoned" waters near the
surface are those which are above seamounts, because there is a nutrient
upwash.  Flatish seafloors underlie waters which are more stratafied, unmixed,
and nutrients which fall to the bottom stay at the bottom.  Or so I'm told.

Certainly whales hang out in such areas to feed.  Map the humpbacks in
northeren waters and they are found... over the seamounts, eating, in the
summer.  In the winter, they're nearer the equator, calving and living off the
summer's fat.  In between, they're migrating.

-L


=====
"The most important things in life are good friends and a strong bull pen." 
             - Bob Lemon
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