Direct Measurement of Recirculation In the Alaskan Stream

Abstract

Three drifting buoys were deployed off Kodiak Island and tracked by satellite in summer 1978; all three veered out of the southwestward flowing Alaskan Stream and moved to the cut and northeast around the Gulf of Alaska gyre. This is the first direct measurement of recirculation around the gyre, but the pattern is strikingly similar to what was inferred two to three decades ago from property distributions and it has been predicted theoretically.