The Yellow Sea Warm Current and the Yellow Sea Cold Bottom Water, Their Impact on the Distribution of Zooplankton in the Southern Yellow Sea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Yellow Sea Warm Current (YSWC) and the Yellow Sea Cold Bottom Water (YSCBW) are two protruding features, which have strong influence on the community structure and distribution of zooplankton in the Yellow Sea. Both of them are seasonal phenomena. In winter, strong north wind drives southward flow at the surface along both Chinese and Korean coasts, which is compensated by a northward flow along the Yellow Sea Trough. That is the YSWC. It advects warmer and saltier water from the East China Sea into the southern Yellow Sea and changes the zooplankton community structure greatly in winter. During a cruise after onset of the winter monsoon in November 2001 in the southern Yellow Sea, 71 zooplankton species were identified, among which 39 species were tropical, accounting for 54.9 %, much more than those found in summer. Many of them were typical for Kuroshio water, e.g. Eucalanus subtenuis, Rhincalanus cornutus, Pareuchaeta russelli, Lucicutia flavicornis, and Euphausia diomedeae etc. 26 species were warm-temperate accounting for 36.6% and 6 temperate 8.5%. The distribution pattern of the warm water species clearly showed the impact of the YSWC and demonstrated that the intrusion of warmer and saltier water happened beneath the surface northwards along the Yellow Sea Trough. The YSCBW is a bottom pool of the remnant Yellow Sea Winter Water resulting from summer stratification and occupy most of the deep area of the Yellow Sea. The temperature of YSCBW temperature remains ${\leq}{\;}10^{\circ}C$ in mid-summer. It is served as an oversummering site for many temperate species, like Calanus sinicus and Euphaisia pacifica. Calanus sinicus is a dominant copepod in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea and can be found throughout the year with the year maximum in May to June. In summer it disappears in the coastal area and in the upper layer of central area due to the high temperature and shrinks its distribution into YSCBW.