Wide Eye Productions just wrapped up a shoot in the South Pacific on board an oceanographic research vessel. The shoot documented a study of the Samoan Passage, an underwater “nozzle” in the Pacific Ocean. University of Washington Oceanographer Matthew Alford contributed this report about the voyage. You can read more of his Samoan Passage blog, here.
The Samoan Passage. Doubt you’ve heard of it. Most haven’t. Turns out that it is a “nozzle” in the ocean’s circulation in the Pacific Ocean. About 6 million tons of water flow through it every second, on its slow journey from the Antarctic to the north Pacific. For context, that is about 36 times the flow in the Amazon, the world’s largest river – and 50 billion times the flow in my shower. South of here, it is a slow, sluggish flow. But the Samoan Passage is the only slot in a series of ridges separating the north and south Pacific, so that all of this flow must go through it. Like a nozzle on a hose, the flow is greatly accelerated as it goes through. As a result, the flow becomes like a whirling, raging river. Except that it is 5 kilometers (over three miles) beneath the sea surface.Our mission is to study this flow – measure it, see it slowly change with the tides and other waves present – and measure its turbulence. The more turbulent the flow, the more it exchanges heat with the warmer water above. All of this matters for the deep circulation of the Pacific – which in turn is key for understanding the way the planet will respond to climate change.
On this cruise, we’ll map out the seafloor and make some pilot measurements. Next summer we’ll come back armed with our full arsenal of moorings, lowered profilers, and a microstructure profiler to measure the turbulence directly.
