Eddies and Biological Processes

Surprisingly, there has been little biological sampling done at space or time scales which will detect changes associated with mesoscale features in the open ocean (by mesoscale we mean scales of tens to hundreds of km and 1 to 3 years). Repeated sampling has either been in a localised area (e.g., Angel 1969, Angel et al. 1982), or in labelled parcels of water (e.g., Climax experiment, see McGowan and Walker 1980, for full references), or in highly advective regions (e.g., CALCOFI investigations), or the data are not in a form amenable to such analysis (e.g., Continuous Plankton Recorder Programme, Colebrook, pers. comm.), or have too gross a scale to detect the features (e.g., many zoogeographical surveys).