Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
7
NATURE YIELDS ECSTATIC
moments. Several years ago I visited St. Vincent's Beach, on the Avalon Peninsula in
southeastern Newfoundland. Here, the crescent cobble beach drops abruptly into the deep waters of the northw-
est Atlantic instead of shoaling gradually, as is most often the case. The cold waters were not only unnaturally
deep but clear, and I hardly could believe my eyes as I gazed through this natural aquarium window and
watched as several humpback whales, flashing their great white flippers and pleated throats, rushed headlong to-
ward the shore, within a few meters of the water's edge, then veered away at the last moment. They lunged and
spouted as they made foray after foray, each time gulping down great hoppers of feed.
I knew their prey was a little fish, the capelin, waiting for its chance to come ashore and perform its most un-
fishlike spawning ritual on the beach itself. The capelin was also the reason for the great rafts of seabirds near
the shore as I made my circumnavigation of the peninsula that day. Here in the waters of Newfoundland was the
perfect convergence of oceanographic conditions to create this natural spectacle— one that is repeated annually
in the great turning of the seasons.
Cold Arctic waters from Hudson Bay and the Davis Strait converge off Cape Chidley at the northern tip of
Labrador to form the Labrador Current, which flows southward along the Labrador and northeastern Newfound-
land coasts. At the southern edge of the Grand Banks, 330 kilometers (200 miles) off Cape Race, this icy river
in the sea meets its antithesis, the great northward flowing Gulf Stream. Both of these titanic forces—the one
Arctic, the other tropical in origin—are deflected, but in their meeting they set the table for a great marine ban-
quet.
