Wind is the force behind fishing booms and busts

Terra Daily: The mid-20th century crash of the sardine fishery off California for decades has vexed marine ecologists searching for the root causes of large fluctuations in the sardine population. Before its collapse, the fishery was one of the world's most productive and formed the setting of John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" in Monterey, Calif. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have now shed light on the puzzle by proposing a plausible mechanism behind the mystery: wind.

Writing in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scripps researchers Ryan Rykaczewski and David Checkley propose that atmospheric wind forces can determine the availability of microscopic organisms that sardine and anchovy feed upon. When wind causes nutrient-rich waters to rise to the surface, plankton levels increase and sardine populations flourish. Conversely, sardine numbers crash when plankton become scarce as wind conditions change. The scientists say their findings may explain the sardine and anchovy booms and busts off California's coast and could explain similar population cycles elsewhere around the world....

Photo of anchovies from NOAA, Wikimedia Commons