California Current

Additionally, extensive upwelling of colder sub-surface waters occurs along the West Coast of the United States, caused by the prevailing northwesterly winds acting through the Ekman Effect.

[3] The cold water is highly productive due to the upwelling, which brings to the surface nutrient-rich sediments, supporting large populations of whales, seabirds and important fisheries.

[3] Phytoplankton production is dramatically increased in these areas because the nutrient-rich water lying below the pycnocline is relatively close to the surface and is thus easily upwelled.

[4] The "Bakun upwelling index" is based on a 20-year average of the monthly mean Ekman transport for different regions off the California coast since the 1970s.

Several studies have investigated the carbon flow from primary production to the pelagic fish stocks which depend on the California Current.

This water then gets carried by the southward bound California Current and adds significant primary production to the sardine population.

In 2005, a failure in the otherwise predictable upwelling events, unassociated with El Niño, caused a collapse in krill in the current, leading to similar effects (Schwing et al., 2003).

Small scale topographic features such as headlands have been shown to cause substantial effects on the population dynamics of benthic invertebrates, such a change in the settlement patterns of crabs and sea urchin.

The characters Marlin (Albert Brooks), Nemo (Hayden Rolence), and Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) join Crush (Andrew Stanton), Squirt (Bennett Dammann) and a group of baby and adult sea turtles in using the California Current, to help them travel to Morro Bay, California to find her parents Jenny and Charlie.