Icy Oceans

By Rosemary Conroy on Friday, August 1, 2003.

listen:

Even on the sunniest days, New Hampshire beaches are cold. Why do our beach going friends just 100 miles south of us get all of the warm water?

Something Wild: Why is the Ocean so Cold?
Air date: August 1, 2003

Welcome to this week’s edition of Something Wild.

I’m Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

Like many flatlanders, I was quite surprised by New Hampshire’s Seacoast.

Not by the fact that it is less than 20 miles long, but by the way the water is so
c-c-c-cold. Even now, at the height of summer, it will barely break 60 degrees Farenheit.

So why do we have such icy water, when just a few hundred miles south, people can spend all day in the ocean and not turn blue?

Well, oceans like the mighty Atlantic are very busy places — besides going back and forth with the tides, its waters are constantly being moved around and around by powerful currents.

The Gulf Stream is the Atlantic’s prime conveyor belt, carrying warm water from the equator northward along the eastern coast of the US.

Once it hits Cape Hatteras, however, the Gulf Stream swings out away from the coastline — taking with it all that lovely warm water. Eventually, it bumps into the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the chilly waters of the polar Labrador Current. This turns the Gulf Stream turns toward Europe. From there, it heads back south to the equator.

So our coastal waters are instead dominated by the much colder Labrador current, which fills up the space between New England and the now far easterly Gulf Stream.

The silver lining to this is that colder water has more oxygen and can hold more nutrients, thereby creating the foundation for a rich undersea world.

It does not, however, create a great place for a human to soak their bodies.

So now you know why some people say, “Swimming in New England is like beating yourself over the head with a hammer. It feels really good when it's done.”

Something Wild is a joint production of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, NHPR, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

For Something Wild, I’m Rosemary Conroy.