Abstract
The acoustic Doppler current profiler, temperature, salinity and density data set were recorded monthly over the course of a year in a tropical coral reef system to elucidate the effects of abrupt bathymetric changes on current variability and surface temperature over time. A minimum of five transect repetitions were performed during one diurnal tidal cycle each month during the year 2008. According to the empirical orthogonal functions, the dominant terms were advection and friction due to the shallowness of the system and the relatively short continental shelf located in front of the Port of Veracruz (Mexico). The data showed the dominance of the northwest-southeast current velocity components (parallel to the coast) attributed to the winds. The southeastward current velocity was the dominant component throughout the year, followed by the northwestward current velocity component. The data suggested that coral reefs produce current rectification near the shallow reef areas (1 m depth). No correlation existed between surface temperature and the chlorophyll-a levels throughout the year. Residual current velocities throughout the year never reached more than 50 cm –1 during the sampling periods, and the surface temperature varied from 21 to 30°C, with the highest temperature being observed near the coast and reefs. Finally there was a direct correlation of the northeasterly and strong northwesterly winds with the well-mixed cold-salty water column in the reef area.
Highlights
Marine ecosystems, those around coastal areas, such as coral reefs, have been studied to understand sediment transport (Agardy 2000, Salas-Monreal et al 2009b), zooplankton and coral larvae dispersion (Holliday and Pieper 1980, Becerro et al 2006, ChaconGomez et al 2013) and the variability in spatial and temporal hydrodynamics and currents (Goreau and Hayes 1994, Salas-de-Leon et al 2004a, Wilkinson and Souter 2008, Salas-Monreal et al 2009b)
Eddies are generated by current rectification (Storlazzi et al 2006), which is attributed to coral reefs that act as natural barriers owing to their bathymetric changes
Fig. 1. – The bathymetry of the Veracruz Reef System is represented with dashed lines, the ship track of both vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) are represented with a solid black line, the anchored station is represented with an asterisk and the four Acoustic Doppler Profiler (ADP) locations in the southeastern coral reef area are represented with numbers (1,2,3,4)
Summary
Those around coastal areas, such as coral reefs, have been studied to understand sediment transport (Agardy 2000, Salas-Monreal et al 2009b), zooplankton and coral larvae dispersion (Holliday and Pieper 1980, Becerro et al 2006, ChaconGomez et al 2013) and the variability in spatial and temporal hydrodynamics and currents (Goreau and Hayes 1994, Salas-de-Leon et al 2004a, Wilkinson and Souter 2008, Salas-Monreal et al 2009b). Most oceanographic studies in the western Gulf of Mexico have been performed by analysing the processes that occur in a range of hundreds of kilometres (Zavala-Hidalgo et al 2003, Monreal-Gomez et al 2004). This scale is not appropriate to study coral reef areas where the dispersion of suspended particles is provided locally in tens of metres (Salas-Monreal et al 2009b). At this scale, eddies are generated by current rectification (Storlazzi et al 2006), which is attributed to coral reefs that act as natural barriers owing to their bathymetric changes. They are responsible for the turbulent flow that reduces light penetration (Salas-Monreal et al 2009b)
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