Scientists peg wind as the force behind fish booms and busts

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This conceptual diagram depicts wind (black arrows) as the driving force behind upwelling (yellow and red arrows) which brings plankton to the surface for sardines and anchovies. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography UC San Diego
This conceptual diagram depicts wind (black arrows) as the driving force behind upwelling (yellow and red arrows), which brings plankton to the surface for sardines and anchovies. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

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.


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