Where Currents Collide at Cape Hatteras, Marine Mammals Gather

Old Dominion University oceanographers completed the first part of an intensive survey in August in their attempt to learn how converging fronts during the summer and winter months attract marine mammals such as the bottle-nosed dolphin to Cape Hatteras. The second survey will take place in January 2005.

Old Dominion is conducting the project, funded by the National Science Foundation, with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, Duke University, the University of North Carolina and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Aboard the College's research vessel the R/V Fay Slover, Jay Austin, research assistant professor of ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences (OEAS), will compile high-resolution data on the temperature, salinity and current distributions in southern Cape Hatteras over a two-week period. Marine mammal observers from Duke University will be on board to correlate mammal sightings with oceanographic structure.

Jay Austin

Additional ODU participants include Ann Gargett, professor of oceanography, Chris Powell, marine electronics technician for OEAS and the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography; and students Teresa Garner, Shuang Huang and Mark Santana.

The Cape Hatteras region is important oceanographically as it is the area where the Gulf Stream separates from the continental slope to the deep ocean. Southward-flowing continental shelf water from the Middle Atlantic Bight converges here with northward-flowing continental shelf water from the South Atlantic Bight. Although it is believed the winter thermal front attracts the bottle-nosed dolphin, the summer front is not well understood.

For more information go to www.whoi.edu/science/PO/hatterasfronts/

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Phyllis Brown, Editor
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