K. Leaman
Also available in Spanish.
The image of drifter tracks contained in the heading "Oceanography of the Intra-Americas Sea" (from there, go to "Intra-America's Sea Drifter Tracks") shows the paths of all surface drifters launched so far into the Caribbean Sea as part of YOTO. Drifters launched into the eastern Caribbean are described in a separate entry. Here we focus on the southwestern part of the Caribbean Sea.
Eight drifters were launched on a line between Cartagena, Colombia and San Andres Island on June 1, 1998 by the Colombian Navy vessel "Pedro de Heredia". These drifters are all drogued at a depth of 15 meters and measure temperature as well as position. They are set to a one-third duty cycle; this means that bursts of positions are obtained every three days.
The general shape of the Panama-Colombia Gyre is well-indicated by these tracks. High speeds - in excess of one nautical mile per hour - are reached by the drifters that circulate around the Gyre and move eastward along the Panamanian coast. Other drifters that started out near San Andres made very small cyclonic loops as they passed through the Golfo de los Mosquitos.
There is also a lot of temporal variability evidenced in these data. For example, when first deployed, two of the drifters immediately left the region and joined the Caribbean Current flowing toward the Yucatan Channel. These drifters also joined with a third drifter that had arrived all the way from the Windward Passage east of Cuba. Of these three, two have now passed through the Channel and are caught in an eddy north of Cuba, while the third has circled back to the Caribbean south of Cuba. These floats are of particular interest because they suggest that other "travelers", such as larvae of some marine species, could quickly be carried from the coastal regions of the southern Caribbean toward Cuba and the northern Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico. We will continue to follow these drifters in the coming months while deploying new sets of drifters into the eastern and western Caribbean.
See also Project Summary.