Predicting Coral Recruitment in Palau’s Complex Reef Archipelago
Figure 2
A schematic of the ‘sticky-water’ effect in a reef system under a steady current.
The circles represent reefs, the thin lines represent streamlines of the mean currents, and the thick line is the distribution of the mean currents along a transverse section, extending from the surrounding waters in through the reefs and out to the surrounding waters. The penetration of water circulation inside the archipelago is asymmetric, being larger on the upstream side than on the downstream side. The thin, straight vertical line is a transverse section, inserted for comparative purposes, to show the different vectors for u1, u2, and u3. The sticky water effect generates slower mean currents (u3) inside the archipelago compared with currents surrounding the archipelago (u1). The deflection of the mean circulation around the archipelago also generates a boundary layer where the currents are even faster than elsewhere (u2), so that u2> u1> u3.