Keeping Tabs on the Kuroshio

Two graduate students monitor sampling operations in the South China Sea during a February 2017 expedition. WHOI physical oceanographer Louis St. Laurent and colleagues from National Taiwan University and National Sun Yat Sun University are working to better understand the Kuroshio Current—a strong surface current that transports warm, tropical water northward, much like the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. The Kuroshio starts off the east coast of the Philippines, enters the South China Sea during the winter monsoon, and flows northeast past Japan before turning east into the open Pacific. (Photo by Sean P. Whelan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)