Enhancing Estuarine Retention of Planktonic Larvae by Tidal Currents

To complete their life history, planktonic larvae of many marine species must be retained in or return to estuarine nursery grounds despite net downstream flows. Interactions between tidal currents and behaviour (vertical migration) of larvae are assumed to play an important role in upstream transport or station-holding, but the effects of tidal currents alone have not received close examination. To elucidate their effects, passive particles were followed numerically in a model of idealized flow. The model basin was patterned after the Newport River Narrows, part of a small coastal-plain estuary with simple bathymetry and a well-studied example of larval retention (mud crabs,Rhithropanopeus harrisii). The flow field, governed by an analytical solution of the linearized equation of motion, was forced by oscillating tidal currents at the seaward end of the estuarine channel, and its energy was dissipated by bottom friction and eddy diffusion. Particles released at various locations showed a net upstream drift, produced by the combined effects of: (1) shear in the vertical profile of horizontal velocity; and (2) tidally-induced vertical motion. Velocity of upstream drift could partially offset net downstream transport by river flow. This velocity increased with distance downstream, providing a mechanism tending to stabilize positions of larvae in the basin. Tidal vertical migration of mud crab larvae in nature is in phase with, and presumably reinforced by, the predicted tide-induced vertical motions of the water. The passive, tidally-induced upstream drift could provide an important mechanism, in addition to larval behaviour, for the retention of larvae in estuaries.