This is an animation by Dr Tabitha Pearman and myself, focusing on a submarine canyon on the edge of the European continental shelf. Tides drive large internal waves which interact with the canyon walls, potentially influencing distributions of fauna on the canyon walls (Pearman et al., 2020).

Whittard Canyon animation

This animation is constructed using two hydrodynamic models; AMM15, which is a NEMO-based model of the European shelf (Graham et al., 2019) for the large scale velocities, and a high resolution model of Whittard Canyon (Aslam et al., 2018) for the detail. Many thanks to Dr. Veerle Huvenne for suggesting the collaboration.

  • Section view of internal waves spreading from canyon walls
  • Snapshot of surface currents around the UK
  • Tides creating waves in an internal density surface
  • Photo of cold water corals (credit: NOC)
  • Map of fauna abundance overlaid on canyon walls

References

Aslam, T., Hall, R.A. and Dye, S.R., 2018. Internal tides in a dendritic submarine canyon. Progress in Oceanography, 169, pp.20-32.

Graham, J.A., O’Dea, E., Holt, J., Polton, J., Hewitt, H.T., Furner, R., Guihou, K., Brereton, A., Arnold, A., Wakelin, S. and Castillo Sanchez, J.M., 2018. AMM15: a new high-resolution NEMO configuration for operational simulation of the European north-west shelf. Geoscientific Model Development, 11(2), pp.681-696.

Pearman, Tabitha Rosemary Rainbow, et al. “Improving the predictive capability of benthic species distribution models by incorporating oceanographic data–Towards holistic ecological modelling of a submarine canyon.” Progress in Oceanography 184 (2020): 102338.