Bertarelli-Annual-Report-2024-FULL - Flipbook - Page 21
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Marine Science 2024
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the area are further being shown as a response to the
reversal in currents and changes in regional thermocline
depth. At a larger scale, the Cape Town team have
revealed the increasing impact of subsurface marine
heatwaves driven by planetary scale eddies and waves
that, trapped along the equator, drive a deepening of the
thermocline that likely causes unseen coral bleaching
at depth. The same waves, combined with changes
in the Indonesian Throughflow, have further been
demonstrated to directly determine the extent of
surface plankton blooms in the western equatorial
Indian Ocean.
Multi-scale Oceanographic
Modelling in Support of
Regional Marine Science
Lead Investigator: Dr. Phil Hosegood,
University of Plymouth
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The Oceanography project team, in Cape Town, South
Africa and Plymouth, UK, have demonstrated over the
past year the crucial role played by oceanographic
processes operating at a range of scales on the Indian
Ocean marine ecosystem. In the Maldives, the University
of Plymouth team will soon complete a three-year
continuous deployment of moorings alongside the
development of high-resolution numerical modelling to
reveal the physical cues to which manta respond. They
are revealing that mantas forage in response to smallscale eddies (whirlpools), generated by the interaction
between seabed topographic features and currents,
that concentrate plankton in specific places at particular
times. The timings of manta leaving and returning to
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