Figure 1.
Study area superimposed on sea-surface hydrographic conditions (a). Purple areas close to the major sea-surface currents indicate where floating macrophytes were previously reported. The letter ‘W’ denotes a warm-water gyre that is isolated from the Kuroshio Extension current. Black scale bar = 200 km. (b) Location maps of bottom trawl stations (purple circles) in 2008 (upper panels: b1, b2, b3), 2009 (middle panels: b4, b5, b6) and 2010 (lower panels: b7, b8, b9), respectively for spring, summer, and autumn. The maps were generated using Matlab R2011b (https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab).