Geographical and seasonal changes of water transparency in the seas adjacent to Japan
1996
Nagata, H. (Japan Sea National Fisheries Research Inst., Niigata (Japan)) | Ogawa, Y. | Hirai, M. | Hirakawa, K.
This paper examines the characteristic features of geographical distribution and seasonal changes in transparency of sea water in the seas adjacent to Japan. Geographically, transparency is high in the offshore waters of the Kuroshio reaching in annual mean of 21.8m and tends to become lower from the southern warm waters to the northern cold waters showing an annual mean of 15.2m. Seasonally, transparency clearly decreases in spring in almost all sea areas and also there occurs another decrease in autumn, especially in the northern waters. Although patterns of spatial and temporal changes in transparency vary with sea areas, they show patterns implying a negative correlation to the concentration of chlorophyll alpha/cell number per litre of phytoplankton in the seas around Japan. This implies that transparency may be a useful and practical index of long-term trends of phytoplankton biomass in sea water masses around Japan
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