S-CHLOROPHYLL SQUIRTS IN THE CHILEAN COAST: A SEAWIFS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Squirts can be defined as one-way jets, transporting coastally upwelled water to the deep ocean and terminating in a counterrotating vortex pair. These mesoscale oceanographic structures can export coastal biological production up to 200 km offshore. We describe, based on the analysis of SeaWIFS images, a squirt located in the northern Chilean coast (30° S). Our results show that the spatial structure of the velocity field, and the hammerhead shape, agree with previous conceptual models. We used the circulation data, resulting from feature-tracking analysis, to estimate the offshore export of coastal carbon production. We conclude that squirts represent a net carbon exporting mechanism accounting for 5% to 12% of coastal carbon production