Currents 



101 



Bumpus, and Richardson, 1955) and the 

 Japanese Current (Uda, 1951), the California 

 Current has a complex meandering and 

 changing pattern. It is a continuation of 

 the warm Japanese Current after the latter 

 has become mixed with so much cold sub- 

 arctic water that it is called the Aleutian 

 Current. About 400 miles wide, the Cali- 

 fornia Current has a total transport amount- 

 ing to about 10,000,000 cu meters/ sec, about 

 three times the total discharge of all the 

 rivers of the earth, but only a fifth to a tenth 

 the transport of the Gulf Stream or of the 

 Japanese Current. 



East of the Cahfornia Current the pattern 

 of flow is dominated by a large eddy centered 

 at the topographic trough of the sea level 



and turning counterclockwise so slowly as 

 to require 10 to 20 days for a half revolution. 

 On the east side of the eddy most of the 

 water turns southeastward and follows the 

 coast to Mexico. This pattern of south- 

 easterly flowing off'shore current bordered 

 by an eddy, or countercurrent, and by a re- 

 turn flow nearer the shore is characteristic 

 of most of the 49 cruises conducted by 

 Scripps Institution between 1937 and 1952 

 (Fig. 88). Only three of the cruises fail to 

 show this pattern to some degree, and these 

 particular cruises had only a few stations in 

 the area because of storm conditions or be- 

 cause the station grid was laid out for map- 

 ping of larger current features than this one. 

 Only minor differences exist in the pattern 



Figure 87. Dynamic topogra- 

 phy during five cruises of the 

 Marine Life Research Pro- 

 gram, 1950-1952. Contours 

 show topography of sea surface 

 with respect to the 300-meter 

 level at 2-cm intervals. Arrows 

 indicate the theoretical direc- 

 tion of current at the surface 

 relative to that at 300 meters. 

 The velocity scale for all maps 

 is given in the map at the up- 

 per left corner, with high ve- 

 locities where contours are 

 close together and low veloci- 

 ties where they are widely 

 spaced. Surface current vectors 

 in the lower right map are 

 based on geomagnetic electro- 

 kinetograph records made dur- 

 ing two cruises of 1952. 



