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 South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down the Australian northeast coast. Most of it is protected by the Fre ...

to the north and the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) 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 Abe ...

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 Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

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 coa ...

(EAC), the Tasman Front

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...

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 land forms 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 is a long submarine ridge running between New Caledonia and New Zealand, about 1300 km off the east-coast of Australia. It is part of a complex region of ridges between the crust of the Pacific Basin and the continental cr ...

(167° E).

Abyssal The abyssal zone or abyssopelagic zone is a layer of the pelagic zone of the ocean. "Abyss" derives from the Greek word , meaning bottomless. At depths of , this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It covers 83% of the total area of the ocean an ...

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 Basin and to the east is the New Caledonia ...

(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