Beach Conference: MMS Delivers Key Messages at Beach Preservation Conference in New Orleans

Using Physical Oceanography: How Water Moves

Underwater photograph of a coral reef. Imagine that you are stranded on a desert island less than 100 miles from shore. You write a message, stuff it into a bottle, and toss it into the ocean. Do you know what the chances are that a floating message in a bottle will be found? They’re not bad -- you actually have about a 50% chance that the bottle will be carried by the ocean to land. The ocean is a constantly moving force that influences our global climate, provides routes for ships, and creates fascinating challenges and movements that we are just beginning to understand.

The ocean moves in many ways; tides, waves, and currents aren’t the only forces at work in the ocean. Eddies, gyres, deep currents, and rings provide circulation patterns that make each Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) region of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) Photograph of a beach. unique. After 30 years of funding scientific studies, the MMS has found that, although some characteristics, such as the response of currents to wind forcing, are common to many continental shelves, the relative importance of various physical processes in influencing the shelf varies from region to region.

Researchers use many different methods to measure the ocean’s moving forces. Drifters, which are instruments that move with the water and record location, have long been used by oceanographers like a message in a bottle to discover and study ocean currents. Technological advances have led to important discoveries. Through the use of satellite imagery, specialized moorings, and acoustic techniques, researchers have gained vital information used to model and predict the ocean’s movements.

Photograph of a fish. The physical oceanography research supported by MMS provides information used in oil-spill trajectory analyses, discharge models, larval dispersal, and engineering designs for platforms. These studies directly support MMS management decisions and are useful in the review of development and production plans and oil-spill contingency plans.

The need to balance the value of OCS resources against the potential for environmental damage is an important concern for MMS. As offshore activities expand into new geographic areas such as the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an understanding of the complete dynamic environment of the ocean will play a major role in MMS’s management of these ocean resources.

MMS Ocean Science Journal

Last Updated: 10/13/2004, 01:25 PM Central Time