A TEMPERATURE ATLAS OF THE GULF OF PANAMA 

 1955-1959* 

 by 

 Paul N. Sund 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 The temperature charts were initially contoured by Y. M. M. Bishop and 

 C. T. Psaropulos, and drawn in their present form by E. B. Bennett, of the 

 Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. The efforts of these persons are 

 gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also expressed to the staff and tech- 

 nicians of the Commission's Panama Laboratory, who collected the field data. 



INTRODUCTION 

 The interests of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission in the hy- 

 drography and biology of the Gulf of Panama have been adequately stated in 

 the Commission's Bulletin series (Forsbergh, 1963; Howard, 1954; Howard and 

 Landa, 1958; Peterson, 1961; Schaefer, 1953; Schaefer and Bishop, 1958; Schae- 

 fer. Bishop and Howard, 1958). The present report deals with data collected 

 on 10 surveys made by Tuna Commission personnel for the purpose of describing 

 seasonal upwelling by means of a study of the temperature structure of the 

 Gulf of Panama, and a comparison of the thermal pattern during the dry, up- 

 welling season (January to April) with that of the rainy season (May to Decem- 

 ber). Considerations of upwelling in the Gulf have been shown to be of inter- 

 est and of probable biological consequence by Schaefer (1957) and by Simpson 

 (1959). 



♦This study was in part supported by Atomic Energy Commission Contract AT (11-1)- 

 34 Project 99 with the Institute of Marine Resources of the University of 

 California, 



