At the junction of ocean, mountains, and glacially carved fjords, Calvert Island is where powerful climate forces collide. This mix of currents and complex nearshore habitats supports remarkable biodiversity.
Our other key influence comes from ocean currents, including the upwelling of deep ocean water that floods onto the continental shelf and up the Goose Trough to fill the coastal channels and inlets.
Deep ocean water is rich in essential nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur compounds. However, it is also relatively acidic and low in oxygen, contributing to the twin problems of ocean acidification and hypoxia in coastal waters.
The water transported from the ocean to the land by weather systems falls on the coastal margin, where is accumulates in forests, bogs, snowpacks and icefields. Eventually much of that water flows back to the ocean via watersheds, fjords and channels, bringing nutrients and massive fluxes of dissolved organic carbon from decaying vegetation. This freshwater influence persists because being less dense than the rest of the water in the ocean, it floats on the surface--effectively an ocean-going river running parallel to the coast.
We have tools to study these linked phenomena in detail.
