The Tasman Front is a relatively warm water east-flowing surface current and thermal boundary that separates the

Coral Sea The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down t ...

to the north and the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who in 1642 wa ...

to the south.

Naming

The name was proposed by Denham and Crook in 1976, to describe a thermal front that extends from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

between the Coral Sea and Tasman Sea.

Geography

Originating in the edge of the

East Australian Current The East Australian Current (EAC) is a warm, southward, western boundary current that is formed from the South Equatorial Current (SEC) crossing the Coral Sea and reaching the eastern coast of Australia. At around 15° S near the Australian co ...

(EAC), the Tasman Front

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the Channel (geography), channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erosion, erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank (cut bank, cut bank or river cl ...

s eastward between longitudes 152° E and 164° E and latitudes 31° S and 37° S, then reattaches to the coastline at New Zealand, forming the East Auckland Current.

Topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

plays a dominant role in establishing the Tasman Front. Data on the Tasman Front shows that the path of the front is influenced in part by the forcing of the flow over the major ridge systems. Meanders observed in the Tasman Front can be driven by

meridional flow Zonal and meridional flow are directions and regions of fluid flow on a globe. Zonal flow follows a pattern along latitudinal lines, latitudinal circles or in the west–east direction. Meridional flow follows a pattern from north to south ...

s along ridges such as those observed at the New Caledonia Trough (166° E) and the

Norfolk Ridge The Norfolk Ridge (Norfolk Island Ridge, Norfolk Rise, South New Caledonia Ridge) is a long submarine ridge running between New Caledonia and New Zealand, about off the east-coast of Australia. It is part of a complex region of ridges between ...

(167° E).

Abyssal The abyssal zone or abyssopelagic zone is a layer of the pelagic zone of the ocean. The word ''abyss'' comes from the Greek word (), meaning "bottomless". At depths of , this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It covers 83% of the total area o ...

currents also drive meanders associated with the

Lord Howe Rise The Lord Howe Rise is a deep sea plateau which extends from south west of New Caledonia to the Challenger Plateau, west of New Zealand in the south west of the Pacific Ocean. To its west is the Tasman Abyssal Plain and to the east is the New Ca ...

(161° E) and Dampier Ridge (159° E).

Oceanography

There have been a number of observational and modeling studies on this front in addition to a number of paleo-oceanographic studies of marine sediments. Contrarily, there have been few biological observational studies, but those have been conducted resulted in relating the physical features of the front to properties of fish communities. Likewise, there are even fewer studies relating biogeochemical properties to physical processes of the Tasman Front.

References

{{Ocean Physical oceanography Tasman Sea Currents of the Pacific Ocean

Naming

Geography

Oceanography

See also

References