JAPANESE CURRENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 13, 15 July 1936, Page 11

JAPANESE CURRENT

DRIFT TO CANADA

CLIMATIC EFFECTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, June 17.

The Japanese Current (Kuroshio) is the most important feature of the superficial water circulation in the North Pacific, just as the Gulf Stream is in the Atlantic. It has been known for many years from a variety of evidence. Vessels crossing the Pacific, especially as they approach Japan, meet with changes in temperature of the water which show the existence of a warm currant from the south. They are displaced on their course by the current, and, from their displacement, the direction and speed of the current have been calculated. .

Driftwood, of species grown only in the Orient, is cast on the North American coast, from Alaska to California. Japanese fishing vessels, disabled for one reason or other, have been driven ashore, after a drift of a year or more across the Pacific. The most recent case was that of the Reiyoei Maru, her crew dead of starvation, which was sighted south of Cape Flattery, at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Glass floats, of a pattern used only in Japan and bearing Japanese inscriptions, are picked up in great numbers on beaches in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. During the operations of the Paragon, chartered by the International Fisheries Commission in the whiter of 1934-35, the vessel*, was stormbound on the western coast of the Queen Charlottes, and two members of the Commission staff found several hundred of these floats. EFFECT OP WINDS. The Japanese Current, although well defined and rapid as it leaves the coast of Japan, becomes less so as it spreads over the Pacific. It is, however, per--petuated and driven on by the prevailing winds of this region. These winds result from the interaction of a lowpressure area off trie Aleutians and a high-pressure centred near the California coast. Very little is known of these winds, beyond observations from ships and shore stations. Their onshore -trend divides into northerly and southerly near the North American coast, varying in latitude with the season, with the shifting of the California trade winds.

In accord with these winds, the Japanese Current divides as the coast is reached, carrying warmer water into the Gulf of Alaska, and forming the California Current, which flows southward. The Alaska Current is deflected to the "passages" of British Columbia and South-eastern Alaska, hence their mild, delightful climate.

The currents on the Asiatic side of the Pacific, in their modification of temperatures there, are of importance from the standpoint of distribution of halibut. The Western Behring and Okhotsk Seas are arctic in character, and from them cold currents follow the coasts of Kamchatka and Sakhalin to the Island of Hokkaido. In summer, the cold water of the Western Behring Sea is said to be overlaid by north-ward-flowing wanner water, a reversal of the Kamchatka Current. The coid current' frdm the Okhotsk, which follows the eastern coast of Sakhalin, meets a warmer current entering La Perouse (Soya) Strait from the "Japan Sea. The northern shore of Hokkaido is, therefore, intermediate in temperature, but the temperature gradient is abrupt, because it is . between the Japanese Current and the cold southbound currents. The extent of coast favourable to halibut is accordingly small, compared with the North American Jittoral.