On land, springtime gales blow seeds and plant spores, and you can almost watch life happen. It may be enough to upset a person’s allergies, but the winds move life and it grows quickly. Critters follow the new growth for their needs and predators follow their prey. We can watch it happen.
At sea, springtime gales move life and begin food chain processes in just as big a way as on land — maybe even bigger — but it is not as easy to see.
Across the ocean, there isn’t anything to geologically alter the wind, so wind events become long-fetch things that exert powerful influences along thousands of miles.
As powerful long-fetch winds push topwater downwind, an upwelling from the deep sea is created to fill the pressure void left by the moving topwater. In some very large areas of the deep sea, water holds vast amounts of nutritious, low-end, good chain stuffs, both flora and fauna.
All of that potential food is lifted to near the surface by the upwelling, and suddenly the next level of our food chain has groceries on their table. Those critters eat and multiply and feed the next level and so on until the fish and other critters we humans eat get a shot at the building food sources.
Folks who work the sea can sense this whole process and see its effects in terms of big healthy schools of baitfish (anchovies, sardines, mackerel, jacksmelt, herring, and the like) as well as squid, octopus, pelagic red crab and other primary forms of nourishment for our dinner fish.
We wouldn’t have white sea bass, halibut, yellowtail, lingcod, rockfish and other delectable critters without this wind-spurred food chain.
Whether I stand on land in the back country or on my charter boat out on the sea, I can feel these forces of life and sense it all come together as the primordial system that drives the good hunting in summer and autumn.
When gales blow… life flows.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
