Hawaii FEP - Western Pacific Fishery Council

Figure 6: Major Surface Currents of the Pacific OceanSource: Tomczak and Godfrey 2003Note:. Abbreviations are used for the Mindanao Eddy (ME), the Halmahera Eddy (HE), the New Guinea Coastal(NGCC), the North Pacific (NPC), and the Kamchatka Current (KC). Other abbreviations refer to fronts: NPC(North Pacific Current), STF (Subtropical Front), SAF (Subantarctic Front), PF (Polar Front), and CWB/WGB(Continental Water Boundary/Weddell Gyre Boundary). The shaded region indicates banded structure (SubtropicalCountercurrents). In the western South Pacific Ocean, the currents are shown for April–November when thedominant winds are the Trades. During December–March, the region is under the influence of the northwestmonsoon, flow along the Australian coast north of 18° S and along New Guinea reverses, the Halmahera Eddychanges its sense of rotation, and the South Equatorial Current joins the North Equatorial Countercurrent east of theeddy (Tomczak and Godfrey 2003).3.2.8 Transition ZonesTransition zones are areas of ocean water bounded to the north and south by large-scale surfacecurrents originating from subartic and subtropical locations (Polovina et al. 2001). Locatedgenerally between 32° N and 42° N, the North Pacific Transition Zone is an area between the41