Island wakes are thought to play a significant role in the vertical and 6 cross shelf mixing processes in strong tidally forced coastal regions. This paper de-7 scribes a comprehensive laboratory study of shallow water wakes behind islands of 8 circular cross section forced by a sinusoidal tidal flow. The wake structure and ver-9 tical circulation are determined through novel three-dimensional particle imaging 10 velocimetry measurements. Four archetypal wake forms (symmetric, asymmetric, 11 unsteady bubble, and vortex shedding) are observed. Through examination of the 12 vertical structure of each of these wake forms, we demonstrate the dependence 13 of vertical transport in island wakes on three key parameters: i) the tidal excur-14 sion relative to the island size, ii) the bottom boundary layer thickness relative 15 to the flow depth and iii) the aspect ratio of the island size to the flow depth. 16 The importance of secondary vortices in island upwelling is highlighted by local 17 peaks in vertical velocity that exceed 40% of the peak external tidal velocity. This 18 study fundamentally changes the view of island wake upwelling from a weak 'tea 19 cup'-like recirculation process to one where primary and secondary flow structures 20 vigorously stir the water column over the full depth. This has fundamental impli-21 cations for the fate of passive biological tracers and the time scales that determine 22 productivity in topographically-complex continental shelf regions. Vorticity 25 1 Introduction 26The wakes of islands and headlands play an important role in lateral and vertical 27 mixing processes, with implications for the transport of nutrients, plankton, sedi-28 ment and pollutants. The vertical transport (upwelling) of nutrient rich water into 29 the surface layer (that has higher light intensity) has important ecological implica-30 tions due to the resulting increased primary productivity. Numerous studies have 31 identified the importance of complex flow features such as eddies and fronts (shear 32 zones) for aggregating sediment and plankton [35, 15, 23]. This can, in turn, ef-33 fect the distribution of benthic and higher order pelagic organisms that graze 34 along these fronts and wakes, taking advantage of lower-trophic-level aggregations 35 [34, 16, 17]. Despite the perceived ecological importance of island wakes, they 36 have received only intermittent research attention over the past several decades, 37 and to date no clear mechanistic description of the flow has clearly supported the 38 hypothesised ecological importance. 39 1.1 Variation of island wake form 40 One of the most interesting features of island wakes is the insensitivity of the 41 large scale flow features to the Reynolds number, Re = U D/ν, where U is the 42 characteristic flow speed, D the characteristic island diameter and ν the molecular 43 kinematic viscosity (or eddy viscosity for turbulent flow [10]). For flow around a 44 cylinder in the laboratory a Kármán vortex street is observed for Re 40, which is 45 beautif...