ProjectsLocally, the importance of southern Africa oceans lies in its high productivity, particularly associated with the Benguela upwellling ecosystem on its west coast that sustains a successful fishing industry and supports local communities. On global and climate scales the leakage of the Agulhas Current into the Atlantic Ocean forms a key component of the global thermohaline circulation. The fact that southern Africa borders both a locally important eastern boundary upwelling ecosystem and a globally significant highly dynamic western boundary current system presents a unique natural laboratory, in terms of both ocean dynamics as well as biodiversity. |