Interior mixing and phytoplankton survival in stratified environments - Introduction to the Physical and Biological Oceanography of Shelf Seas - page 229

(a)

20

10

0

18:00 18:00 00:00 03:00 06:00

(b)

20

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18:00 18:00 00:00 03:00 06:00

Time -80 dB -30

13 °C 18

Figure 7.14 See colour plates version . Mooring observations of (a) the acoustic volume
scattering strength (dB) at 265 kHz and (b) temperature ( C) in Monterey Bay. From
(Holliday et al., 2010), with permission from Elsevier.

predators. However, it is also possible that the phytoplankton and the top predators
are responding in different ways to the same physical processes. For instance,
foraging predators over a small seabed bank in the Gulf of Maine are not correlated
with overall prey biomass, but instead are found at sites where internal waves act to
concentrate patches of prey (Stevick et al., 2008 ). Hence, predators are not necessar-
ily responding to a sequence of trophic interactions that began with increased
primary production, but are instead more immediately dependent on the mechanics
of turbulence and prey availability. From an oceanographer's perspective, patchiness
of the chlorophyll in the SCM is interesting because the phytoplankton are providing
a relatively fast response indicator of interior mixing processes.

Summary

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The seasonal cycle of thermal stratification in a shelf sea can be well reproduced by
models based on the energetics arguments developed in Chapter 6 . A more complete