Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
A humpback whale breaches, a spectacular but mysterious behavior characteristic of the species.
The Labrador Current itself consists of a warmer and saltier offshore branch, with origins along eastern
Greenland, and a colder and fresher inshore branch, with its genesis in Hudson Bay and the Canadian High
Arctic. In its journey from the Arctic, the Labrador Current picks up freshwater from the outflow of the Hud-
son Strait, which is largely driven by rivers draining into Hudson and Ungava Bays, then collects more fresh-
water from rivers draining into coastal Labrador. The accumulation of all of this river water makes the Lab-
rador Current one of the major contributors of freshwater to the world's oceans, exceeding by as much as ten
times the volume of freshwater flushed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Even so, this freshwater component is
less than 1 percent of the total volume of the current as a whole.
