Water Exchange at the Mouth of Tanabe Bay in Kii Peninsula, Japan

Abstract

Tanabe bay is a small embayment connected directly to the Pacific Ocean to the south, whereas frequently suffers from harmful algal blooms due to sewage effluent and the local aquaculture industry. For preserving the ecosystem in the bay, it is necessary to understand an oceanic structure in the bay along with water exchange at the bay entrance. We thus conduct a comprehensive investigation consisting of a shipboard measurement, a season-long platform observation, and a triply nested high-resolution ocean modeling. The water exchange at the bay mouth is largely affected by semi-diurnal tidal currents and episodic subtidal intrusion of the offshore water controlled by mesoscale circulations.