The Canary/Iberia Current Upwelling System
This chapter describes the major coastal upwelling system on the continental shelves off Iberia (Portugal) and northwest Africa, its physical origin, ecological, cultural, social and economic relevance, and how it has been impacted under the pressures of
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The Canary/Iberia Current Upwelling System
Abstract This chapter describes the major coastal upwelling system on the continental shelves off Iberia (Portugal) and northwest Africa, its physical origin, ecological, cultural, social and economic relevance, and how it has been impacted under the pressures of fishing, climate variability and climate change.
Keywords Upwelling Oceanography Canary current Iberia current Marine biogeochemistry Marine ecology Canary eddy corridor Fisheries Fish stock variations Climate-change impacts
I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely & build our castles in the air Bram Stoker (1847–1912) (taken from Dracula, 1897)
6.1
Introduction
The Canary Current Upwelling System is named after the Canary Current, which is an eastern branch of the subtropical gyre in the North Atlantic. Despite its name, the system also comprises the coastal upwelling region off the Iberian coast (Portugal), which can be affiliated with the offshore Portugal Current. In its broadest sense the large marine ecosystem of this upwelling system covers the latitudinal range 12°–43° N (Fig. 6.1), but both the northern and southern limits shift seasonally. The entire area is separated into two distinct upwelling regions with apparently little continuity of flows between them. This separation is caused by the interruption of the coastline at the Strait of Gibraltar, which allows the exchange of water between the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. As one of the four eastern boundary upwelling systems, the ecosystem is highly productive and supports a variety of fisheries in the countries of the region, which are northwestern Spain (Galicia), Portugal, Morocco, Western Sahara (which is © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J. Kämpf and P. Chapman, Upwelling Systems of the World, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42524-5_6
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6 The Canary/Iberia Current Upwelling System
Fig. 6.1 Key upwelling regions in the eastern North Atlantic. The Canary current upwelling system comprises upwelling off the Iberian coast and off northwest Africa (panel a; displayed are SSTs). Five subregions are marked (SR1 Galician; SR2 Portuguese; SR3 Gulf of Cadiz; SR4 Moroccan; SR5 Mauritanian). Panel bdisplays an upwelling situation along the equatorward facing coastline of central Africa. This specific upwelling, which is unrelated to winds, is further described in Chap. 9. Image sources Google earth with ETOPO 1 bathymetry layer (background image), Arístegui et al. (2009) (panel a), Toualy et al. (2012) (panel b)
administered by the Kingdom of Morocco), Mauritania and Senegal. Fisheries agreements (the latest being the 2006 EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement, FPA) have been signed periodically between Morocco and the EU since the 1980s, allowing European vessels (especially Spanish and Portuguese) to fish in Moroccan waters in exchange for a monetary contribution. With little opportunity to develop their own infrastructure, sub-Saharan West Afr
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