Tracks of surface drifters from a major fairway to marine protected areas in the Gulf of Finland

Abstract

Pollution caused by shipping accidents or by intentional discharge of harmful materials can be transported by currents to locations far from the source, and therefore poses a potential risk to marine protected areas (MPAs). The risk of current-driven pollution to MPAs in the Gulf of Finland is assessed by analysing the paths from 23 surface drifters crossing a major fairway in the western and central parts of the Gulf of Finland. About 2/3 of the drifters entered into one of the MPAs. The majority of drifters reached the Ekenäs Archipelago near the western coast of Finland. The travel time from the fairway to the MPAs ranged from 1.3 days to 36.1 days, suggesting that different processes may be influencing the surface circulation patterns and that the drifters can travel long distances before reaching a MPA.

Verification of modelled locations of coastal areas exposed to current-driven pollution in the Gulf of Finland by using surface drifters

“…For this reason the analysis is limited to a comparison of the statistics of coastal areas reached by the drifters (called coastal hits) and the time it took the drifters to reach the nearshore (called nearshore hits) with similar values extracted from numerical simulations. An analysis of pathways of surface drifters from the major fairway in the Gulf of Finland to marine protected areas (that extend far to the offshore) is presented in [9]. To make the comparison more explicit, the focus is on the fate of pollution caused by ship traffic in the Gulf of Finland.…”