Dependence of ocean surface filaments on wind speed: An observational study of North Atlantic right whale habitat

Abstract

Coherent filaments at the ocean surface often appear to be transient watermass boundaries, where currents converge, surfactants accumulate, and frontal structure at depth can possibly delineate enhanced biological activity in the upper water column. Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) permits filaments to be observed at O[1-km] resolution, but extensive coherent structures are more apparent in weaker winds. A wind speed adjustment is proposed for filaments (i.e., contiguous SAR contrasts) of at least 10 km in length. Measures of dependence (distance correlation and the linear and nonlinear components of Pearson correlation) are examined to identify a broad peak in the relationship between filament contrast and weak or moderate values of surface wind speed, where a variable wind speed exponent is employed to maximize these measures.Three locations of recent North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) sightings in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are sampled between 2008 and 2020 by 324 Radarsat-2 SAR scenes and 10-m wind speed from the ERA5 reanalysis. The inverse relationship between SAR contrast magnitude and wind speed is quantified, and a reduced correlation is obtained for all three domains when SAR contrast is weighted by wind speed to the power of 0.8. A more uniform emphasis on ocean surface structure within a SAR scene, or across multiple scenes, can thus be considered in the search for prey aggregations of the North Atlantic right whale.