Alaskan Stream flow in the eastern subarctic Pacific and the eastern Bering Sea and its impact on biological productivity

Abstract. We demonstrate the transport pathways of Alaskan Stream water in the eastern subarctic Pacific and the eastern Bering Sea from October 1, 1994 to September 12, 2016 with the help of altimetry-based Lagrangian maps. A mesoscale eddy activity along the shelf-deep basin boundaries in the Alaskan Stream region and the eastern Bering Sea is shown to be related with the wind stress curl in the northern North Pacific in winter. A significant correlation is found between the concentration of chlorophyll-a in the Alaskan Stream area and eastern Bering Sea in August–September and the wind stress curl in the northern North Pacific in November–March. The mesoscale dynamics, forced by the wind stress curl in winter, may determine not only lower-trophic-level organism biomass but also salmon abundance/catch in the study area.