Circulation and connectivity on the Australian North West Shelf

Australia's North West Shelf supports a diverse range of tropical habitats and marine communities, as well as being Australia's most economically significant marine region. This study is the first attempt to describe the ocean circulation across the North West Shelf on time-scales from hours to years, and space scales from 10 km over the entire shelf to 1 km in a selected focus area around the Dampier Archipelago. A series of nested circulation models have been developed with forcing by realistic winds, tides, and larger scale oceanographic conditions (taken from a global circulation model). Dispersion and connectivity patterns have also been estimated over the shelf using particle-tracking techniques. The simulations covered a period of more than 6 years, allowing the tidal, seasonal, and interannual characteristics to be investigated. Model results confirm that the instantaneous current patterns are strongly dominated by the barotropic tide and its spring–neap cycle. However, longer term transports over the inner- and mid-shelf were mainly controlled by wind-driven flow, which followed the seasonal switch from summer monsoon winds to southeasterly trades in winter. Results were shown to be relatively insensitive to adjustable model parameters and sub-model structures. However, model performance was strongly dependent on the quality of the forcing fields. Connectivity results have been represented in terms of a comprehensive set of statistical probabilities that have been made available online (http://www.per.marine.csiro.au/connie). The potential regional-scale connectivity between coral reefs on the North West Shelf has been used to illustrate the approach.