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The animated movie Finding Nemo is responsible for most children’s (and parents') image of the East Australian Current.
Marlin: “I need to get to the East Australian Current – E A C.”
Crush: “You’re ridin' it dude. Check it out!”
And so Marlin, the father of little clownfish Nemo, rides on the back
of a turtle as they hitch a ride on the East Australian Current all the
way to Sydney. ‘Surfing’ the East Australian Current.
But did Hollywood tell us the truth about what happens in our own backyard?
Well, the movie may have added just a little poetic license to the
real ways of the ocean. The East Australian Current is not the
fast-flowing warp-tube as it’s portrayed in the movie – it’s an even
better ride than that.
Let the current flow
The East Australian Current plays a crucial role in our east-coast climate and ecosystems. As it is World Oceans Day this weekend (June 8), it’s a good time to have a closer look at the big current in our own backyard and what it does for us.
Let’s start with what’s correct in the movie. The East Australian
Current does flow along the East coast of Australia, obviously. And it
does flow southward from the Great Barrier Reef. Speeds in the core of
the EAC are among the strongest in the South Pacific, up to 7km an hour. The East Australian Current – more a ribbon than a tube.Eric Oliver
The movie would have you think that the East Australian Current is a
narrow jet that you can jump in and out of as your thrill-seeking self
desires. But actually the real East Australian Current is much bigger
and much wilder than in the movie – just not so conducive to surfing.
It transports a staggering 40 million cubic metres of water southward
each second. That is the equivalent of 16,000 Olympic swimming pools
flowing along our coastline, every second. The current is almost 100km
wide, and more than 1.5km deep – in fact, more like a ribbon than a
tube.
Why does the East Australian Current exist?
The wind systems over the ocean and the spin of the Earth cause water
in both hemispheres to slowly flow toward the equator in what’s called
the subtropical gyres (also where all our plastics ends up in the infamous garbage patches).
Obviously, the water that flows towards the equator has to go
somewhere. It does so in strong currents trapped tightly against the
eastern coasts of landmasses.
Our East Australian Current is part of a family of five. All
subtropical ocean basins have one of these western boundary currents:
the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic Ocean
the Brazil Current in the South Atlantic Ocean
the Agulhas Current in the Indian Ocean
the Kuroshio Current in the North Pacific Ocean
the East Australian Current in the South Pacific Ocean.
Each of these is set up by the same wind patterns. The theory that
explains western boundary currents was developed by Norwegian
oceanographer Harald Sverdrup and was one of the major accomplishments
of physical oceanography in the 1940s.
Here come the eddies
Once the East Australian Current reaches New South Wales, the current breaks up into a train of giant, 100km-wide vortices.
These so-called eddies are giant droplets of warm tropical water, and
they slowly move south while rotating anti-clockwise at 5 to 10km per
hour. The amount of eddies passing along the NSW coast is so large that
some have termed the region “Eddy Avenue”.
For many people, the eddies and strength of the East Australian
Current become worth millions of dollars as the Sydney to Hobart yacht
race kicks off on Boxing Day each year. If you’re on the wrong side of
the eddy, the current is against you in your race south. Choosing the
right path around the eddies is big business.
Apart from yachts, the EAC also transports marine species southward
with tropical fish – including Marlin and Dory in their search to find
Nemo – finding themselves in subtropical latitudes.
A change in the EAC
Climate change is already having an impact on the East Australian Current. The part south of Sydney has warmed up very fast, much faster
than most of the rest of the ocean. And this warming is expected to
continue in the future, with the current probably getting faster and
stronger as well.
The warmer water being carried south to Tasmania already has an
impact on marine life there. With warmer water, new species such as the
spiny sea urchin arrive.
These new species, as well as the warmer water itself, slowly destroy Tasmania’s kelp forests, which support unique marine ecosystems, transforming them into rocky barrens.
One of the most iconic kelp species, Macrosystis pyrifera or “giant kelp”, forms underwater forests up to 30m tall and is rapidly disappearing along Tasmania’s shores. The giant kelp forests off Tasmania are quickly disappearing.
Such large relocations of marine ecosystems can occur more often in a
warming ocean. Species will be forced to move southward as their water
temperature “at home” increases.
While this might be bad for all ecosystems, it is particularly dire
for species now living in Tasmania. Unlike the tropical species in
Queensland or the temperate species in New South Wales, which can move southwards (albeit not without problems), Tasmanian species have nowhere to go.
If they try to move southward they encounter the edge of the
continental shelf. With the next piece of habitable shelf more than
3,000km to the south in Antarctica, that’s the end of the line.
"Finding Nemo," 2003. Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation
Studios. Directed by Andrew Stanton, co-directed by Lee Unkrike. Written
by Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, and David Reynolds; based on a story
by Andrew Stanton. Produced by Graham Walters.
Reviewed by Ann Millett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The animated feature "Finding Nemo" swept the box office last summer,
and audiences of all ages and critics alike were overwhelmed by how a
seemingly simple story had made such a splash. Recently having a second
life on DVD, the film has become the most financially successful film of
2003 and the largest grossing animated feature of all time, outshining
Disney/Pixar's previous hits Toy Story I and II and Monsters, Inc.,
as well as its competing summer blockbusters. "Finding Nemo" surfaced
as a characteristic Disney epic adventure and heart-warming coming of
age tale with resplendent twists. The plot follows a young clown fish,
Nemo (Alexander Gould), who is separated from his father, Marlin (Albert
Brooks), by the human intervention of a scuba diver and held captive in
the office fish tank of a Sydney, Australia dentist (Bill Hunter).
Nemo is rescued through the joint efforts of exotic, yet familiarly
goofy, ironically down-to-earth, and cleverly caricatured populations of
marine creatures. Seagulls, pelicans, turtles, manta rays, jellyfish,
squid, starfish, sharks, whales, lobsters, other curious crustaceans,
and a glorious array of tropical fish in all configurations and designs
animate the film's lavish oceanic world. The creatures are not only
strikingly heterogeneous in appearance, but also have international
accents or dialects and personas that convey a variety of social styles.
This cast of characters, their tongue-in-cheek, witty dialogue, and
appropriately colorful depictions add to the appeal and smash success of
the film, as vivid and illusionistic artistry positions the viewer as a
visually awed undersea explorer.
I, too, was reeled in by the tempo, humor, and visual splendor of the
film, as one who appreciates and studies visual culture. Further, as a
disability studies-minded viewer, I saw far more beneath the spectacular
surface. In "Finding Nemo", I discovered sunken treasure—a
multifaceted representation of disability. The protagonist, Nemo,
displays a small, or "deformed," fin that is a congenital result of a
fatal attack on his mother and sibling eggs—a corporeal characteristic
that the story surrounds, yet does not drown in. In an aquatic natural
world where species maintain characteristic, standardized appearances,
Nemo is marked as visually and socially different, yet hardly
inadequate. He explains that he has a "lucky" fin when questioned by
his classmates, who then offer their own explanations of distinctive
physical quirks: a squid confesses to having a lazy tentacle, a seahorse
boasts of his "H2O intolerance." Nemo's peers accept him, even admire
his self-confident attitude and plucky spirit, because in this diverse
"school" of fish, everybody's different. Considering such
characteristics as "disabilities" may seem absurd; however, this makes a
valid parallel point about many physical differences and their assumed
consequences.
There is suggestion in the film that Nemo may not be able to swim as
well as other fish, particularly by his father, but no evidence supports
this, or at least Nemo swims well enough with his own adapted methods
to get where he needs and wants to go. In true to life fashion, Nemo
continually negotiates and battles restrictive assumptions about him
based on his impaired fin, to both positive and negative results.
Disabled people are commonly underestimated, often most painfully by
those who should have the most faith in us, who love us, and know us
best, exemplified by Marlin's loving, but potentially damaging
overprotection of his son. Marlin smothers Nemo, sequesters him near
their home, attempts to speak for him, and fears others' condemnation to
the point that he avoids social interaction. Marlin enacts his son's
social exclusion, continually embarrasses and frustrates the willful
Nemo, and causes rifts in their relationship. To defiantly establish
his independence, Nemo enters into the drastically deeper section of the
sea surrounding his community termed the "drop off," where he is
captured. His disability plays a role in his fate, yet not because he
is inherently deficient or vulnerable, and that same disability enables
his return home, for his marking identifies him for those who search—it
makes him memorable. Disability becomes part of Nemo's personal history
and social identity, visually marking him as a survivor.
"Finding Nemo" proves to be an unconventional, transgressive
representation of disability. In conventional narrative, disability
becomes the sole characteristic of one-dimensional characters that most
often require physical change, repair, or elimination in order for the
narrative to maintain a supposedly preferable state of social and
psychic order, or "normality." Such narratives tend to fall into
generic categories that typecast disabled characters as misfortunate
tragedies or sentimental, largely patronized heroes. Conversely,
"Finding Nemo" paints disability as a flavorful ingredient in cultural
diversity—both remarkable, yet necessarily everyday, perhaps even
disguised in the tides of life. Indeed, to the mainstream audience,
"Finding Nemo" isn't "about" disability at all, because physical
difference isn't a glaring spectacle in the film that signals danger or
elicits pity, as viewers may be more used to witnessing. Further,
disability is presented as a socially constructed character quality,
rather than a state of the body to which value judgments are assigned.
The fact that the role of disability floats past the mainstream
audience and most critics of "Finding Nemo" without notice perhaps
attests on a metanarrative level to how disability may afford a
privileged viewing perspective, such that "seeing" disability occurs
more immediately for a disability-aware audience who identify with the
characters and discover deeper layers of meaning in the film.
In addition to Nemo, various eccentric aquatic bodies and personalities
flow in and out of the screen in harmonies of difference, many of which
may be considered disabilities. Many of the characters' humorous
idiosyncrasies could be called "abnormalities." Dory (Ellen DeGeneres),
a lively blue tang who becomes Marlin's sidekick on the quest for
Nemo's rescue, has chronic short-term memory loss. The "reason" for
this is not revealed, as the film unconventionally does not medicalize
or otherwise attribute a cause for disability. Dory's chronic condition
causes pitfalls, yet she can also read written English and speak whale,
and due to her openly sociable personality and penchant for adventure,
Dory initiates communication with many other species that results in
progress for the journey. Dory assumes agency in the plot, can remember
through adaptive problem solving when it is vitally crucial, and
displays her "abnormality" as comical charm. Further, she professes an
overall consciousness for the film that life is inevitably a series of
obstacles, as well as opportunities for adventure, and that one must, as
Dory joyfully expresses in her repeated slogan, "keep on swimming." In
addition, she and Marlin meet sea turtles that are more than150 years
old, but hardly suffer from their age—they ironically speak in the
tongue of youthful beach bums, referring to Marlin as "dude" as they
lead the duo to Sydney. Marlin proves emotionally disabled by the
traumatic loss of his wife and chronic anxiety; vegetarian-aspiring
sharks undergo a 5-step program; and in the Sydney fish tank, Nemo meets
a very motley, some might call neurotically ill, group, including
Gurgle (Austin Pendleton), a royal gamma obsessed with germ-free
cleanliness and Deb (Vicki Lewis), a white humbug damsel fish who
routinely misrecognizes herself in reflection from the tank wall as an
imaginary twin sister, Flo. Their leader fish, Gill (Willem Dafoe),
like Nemo, came from the sea, longs to return, and is physically
distinguished—marked by scars. Also like Nemo, this trademark signifies
wisdom, "street" smarts, and rites of passage. All of the remarkable,
"abnormal," even freakish characters in "Finding Nemo" swim with and
against the undertow, and neither "overcome" their so-called physical
and intellectual "problems," nor prevail "in spite of" them, as
conventional narrative and stereotypes would prescribe. And in graphic
illustration, they far exceed even two dimensions.
However, these aspects are greatly overlooked in the film, perhaps
poignantly asserting the film's largely unprecedented progressiveness.
After all, more classic animated fairytales have been known for their
dubious, and sometimes publicly criticized sexist and ethnocentric
biases. The princesses are stolen property, properly saved and wed,
while evil characters are laden with non-Western, non-white stereotypes.
Further, malice is often embodied in physically "deformed," and
otherwise visually "abnormal" characters, marked, like Nemo, by
displayable difference and often specifically placed on display to
provide a counter-example to "normal." By contrast, "Finding Nemo"
brings elements of social and cultural diversity to life in educational
marine biology lessons of visually distinguishable, sometimes competing,
yet non-hierarchical species. One would have a difficult time
differentiating which kinds of bodies are on display in this splendid
spectacle, and to what significance. "Finding Nemo's" success may have
to do with its refreshing nature and escape from the typical good versus
evil dichotomies in favor of flavorful cultural relativism. "Other"
fish populate the sea. Nemo's disability, visually defined by his
unique fin, affects, yet does not dictate his daily life, and initiates
moments of joy and self-discovery. "Finding Nemo" becomes an act of
rescue, maturation, and acceptance of self and others for all the
characters. Marlin learns to trust Nemo and his self-defined abilities,
as prescriptive stereotypes of disability are tested and disproved and
the protagonist's triumph is enabled.
"Finding Nemo" has all of the usual pleasures of the Pixar animation style--the comedy and wackiness of "Toy Story" or "Monsters Inc." or "A Bug's Life." And it adds an unexpected beauty, a use of color and form that makes it one of those rare movies where I wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision. The movie takes place almost entirely under the sea, in the world of colorful tropical fish--the flora and fauna of a shallow warm-water shelf not far from Australia. The use of color, form and movement make the film a delight even apart from its story.
There is a story, though, one of those Pixar inventions that involves kids on the action level while adults are amused because of the satire and human (or fishy) comedy. The movie involves the adventures of little Nemo, a clown fish born with an undersized fin and an oversized curiosity. His father, Marlin, worries obsessively over him, because Nemo is all he has left: Nemo's mother and all of her other eggs were lost to barracudas. When Nemo goes off on his first day of school, Marlin warns him to stay with the class and avoid the dangers of the drop-off to deep water, but Nemo forgets, and ends up as a captive in the salt-water aquarium of a dentist in Sydney. Marlin swims off bravely to find his missing boy, aided by Dory, a blue tang with enormous eyes who he meets along the way.
These characters are voiced by actors whose own personal mannerisms are well known to us; I recognized most of the voices, but even the unidentified ones carried buried associations from movie roles, and so somehow the fish take on qualities of human personalities. Marlin, for example, is played by Albert Brooks as an overprotective, neurotic worrywart, and Dory is Ellen DeGeneres as helpful, cheerful and scatterbrained (she has a problem with short-term memory). The Pixar computer animators, led by writer-director Andrew Stanton, create an undersea world that is just a shade murky, as it should be; we can't see as far or as sharply in sea water, and so threats materialize more quickly, and everything has a softness of focus. There is something dreamlike about the visuals of "Finding Nemo," something that evokes the reverie of scuba-diving.
The picture's great inspiration is to leave the sea by transporting Nemo to that big tank in the dentist's office. In it we meet other captives, including the Moorish Idol fish Gill (voice by Willem Dafoe), who are planning an escape. Now it might seem to us that there is no possible way a fish can escape from an aquarium in an office and get out of the window and across the highway and into the sea, but there is no accounting for the ingenuity of these creatures, especially since they have help from a conspirator on the outside--a pelican with the voice of Geoffrey Rush.
It may occur to you that many pelicans make a living by eating fish, not rescuing them, but some of the characters in this movie have evolved admirably into vegetarians. As Marlin and Dory conduct their odyssey, for example, they encounter three carnivores who have formed a chapter of Fish-Eaters Anonymous, and chant slogans to remind them that they abstain from fin-based meals.
The first scenes in "Finding Nemo" are a little unsettling, as we realize the movie is going to be about fish, not people (or people-based characters like toys and monsters). But of course animation has long since learned to enlist all other species in the human race, and to care about fish quickly becomes as easy as caring about mice or ducks or Bambi.
When I review a movie like "Finding Nemo," I am aware that most members of its primary audience do not read reviews. Their parents do, and to them and adults who do not have children as an excuse, I can say that "Finding Nemo" is a pleasure for grown-ups. There are jokes we get that the kids don't, and the complexity of Albert Brooks' neuroses, and that enormous canvas filled with creatures that have some of the same hypnotic beauty as--well, fish in an aquarium. They may appreciate another novelty: This time the dad is the hero of the story, although in most animation it is almost always the mother.
Animation has always been a tip-of-the-iceberg art in which seconds of finished work represent weeks of thought and labor. Ever since he put Toy Story into production, John Lasseter, the reigning genius at Pixar and the new chief of Disney animation, has infused that arduous process with joy and a love for movie heritage - even as he's taken cartooning (in the words of Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear) "to infinity and beyond."
For anyone who's followed Pixar closely, everything Lasseter has been saying in the wake of Pixar's sale to Disney - about the culture of Pixar being more important than its economics - rings as true as a church bell. I interviewed Lasseter in 1995 when Pixar went through its first great growth spurt. "The essence of Pixar," he told me then, "is the technical and the artistic working together."
He might have added fun - but, of course, he didn't have to, because that was evident everywhere. Personnel zoomed down hallways on scooters and filled their rooms or work stations with art books and toys and audio-visual platters of all types.
One of Lasseter's prized possessions is his autographed poster of the international Japanese cartoon hit, My Neighbor Totoro, by his acknowledged master, legendary 2-D animator Hayao Miyazaki. Lasseter and his collaborators have helped prepare and promote exquisite English-language versions of Miyazaki's masterpieces, including Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.
So when Lasseter says he treasures traditional animation and will bring it back to Disney, he's probably not bluffing. When he was seeking collaborators for his first computer-animated feature, Lasseter said he "looked at guys who worked with clay, cel, sand, and pencils; no matter what the medium, I wanted to see if they were able to take a character and make us feel that it was breathing and thinking."
Lasseter shared the plot credit for Toy Story with Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and all-around story whiz Joe Ranft (who died in a car accident last summer). All revered the great slapstick comedians: Ranft was a Laurel and Hardy man; Stanton said, simply, "Buster Keaton is God." Stanton co-directed A Bug's Life (1998) with Lasseter and then directed Finding Nemo (2003); Docter directed Monsters, Inc. (2001).
Lasseter also has a gift for collaborating with artists and writers outside Pixar's fold. Joss Whedon helped shape the final script of Toy Story before he became the king of cult TV with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. Whedon shared an easy rapport with the animators - "We were raised on the same cartoons and toys," he said. And he enjoyed an active give-and-take with Lasseter: "I was having trouble with Tom Hanks' voice [as the cowboy doll, Woody], and John suggested I watch a scene near the beginning of Nothing in Common, where he jokes with everybody as he walks through his office." That did the trick.
Recently, Lasseter has done what few mini-moguls have ever dared: take a maverick artist in and let him rip. Pixar's 2004 smash, The Incredibles, was the work of Brad Bird, a man known to animators and production artists as a visionary and to executives as a troublemaker and a box-office question mark. A decade before live-action dysfunctional-family fables became the mainstay of the Sundance Film Festival, Bird wrote and directed a droll abused-canine saga called Family Dog for the 1987 season of Steven Spielberg's anthology series, Amazing Stories. Bird immediately became as respected for what he wouldn't do as for what he did. He refused to be part of the team that spun Family Dog into a series, because he recognized that a rushed episodic-TV schedule would rob his creation of the source of all its humor.
Bird's 1999 feature, The Iron Giant, was a marvelous modern fairy tale about a huge robot from outer space who washes up on the shores of "Rockwell, Maine" in 1957. Bird took a haunting, wispy fable that the poet Ted Hughes wrote for his children after the suicide of their mother, Sylvia Plath, and turned it into a piquant variation on the ultimate fish-out-of-water tale, E.T. It was a box-office disappointment - and an artistic high-water mark.
Lasseter's extraordinary love for all the details of moviemaking makes him special both as a director and a company leader. During Toy Story's final stages I got to watch "cartoon dailies" with Lasseter, his animators and his techies. At one point, Buzz Lightyear came on screen, coiffing a troll doll. In his own stiff way, Buzz oozed confidence and finesse. The troll's eyes blinked and the room erupted in wisecracks as the animators envisioned Buzz taking the place of Warren Beatty in Shampoo ("You are so much more beautiful than the other trolls"). Lasseter, though, concentrated on whether they could make Buzz's combing stroke more vertical and modulate the troll's blinking eyes right before he combed downward. Then the director sighed in admiration. "Buzz is good at everything ..."
Movie's popularity has children asking about clown fish
June 11, 2003|By Lauren Rosenblum | Lauren Rosenblum,SUN STAFF
Movies are famous for using product tie-ins to attract viewer interest and propel the momentum of a film. Star Wars, Toy Story and Pokemon are just a few that drove kids crazy. Finding Nemo, Disney and Pixar's latest animated film, is no different, hyping the movie with toys for all ages.
Nemo-themed toys, created by Hasbro, run the gamut, from stuffed animals and board games to bath toys and candy.
But there's one thing that's different about the Nemo craze: a tie-in that executives at Hasbro, Disney and Pixar might not have anticipated. The infatuation with Disney's new animated character has created a rush to find a real live clown fish.
Finding Nemo, a colorful, humorous tale set in the depths of the ocean, opened nationwide to shining reviews on May 31. Children - and adults - have become hooked on the lovable lead character, Nemo, a clown fish who lives near the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Sydney, Australia.
Disney's hit musical "Frozen" became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time over the weekend, pushing its estimated worldwide box-office haul to $1.072 billion and unseating "Toy Story 3" for the top spot. Now we're curious to hear what your favorite animated movie is among the top grossers.
Featuring the voices of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel, "Frozen," a loose retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen," boasts two Academy Awards — for animated feature and original song — in addition to its seat on the box-office throne.
"Toy Story 3," which was released in 2010 and took in $1.06 billion, won the same two Oscars and also became the first animated movie in history to cross the $1-billion mark.
PHOTOS: Movie scenes from 'Frozen'
Rounding out the top five highest-grossing animated movies are "The Lion King" (1994), "Despicable Me 2" (2013) and "Finding Nemo" (2003).
Disney's hit film Finding Nemo was closer to the truth that filmmakers thought, it has been revealed.
Researchers found that clownfish, such as Nemo, really do migrate huge distances, some up to 400km.
However, unlike the film, they found in reality the fish only make the incredible journeys in their larval stage.
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Researchers found that clownfish, such as Nemo, really do migrate huge distances, some up to 400km - but only when they are larvae.
HOW THEY DID IT
The team used DNA fingerprinting to identify local, long-distant migrant, and hybrid individuals from populations throughout the entire Omani clownfish (Amphiprion omanensis) species range.
Around 400 fish were harmlessly caught during 92 dives, and a small fin clip taken for DNA analysis before releasing fish back to their colonies.
The study, led by Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology and Global Change in Biosciences at the University of Exeter, found that six percent of the fish sampled had migrated over 400 km from one population to the other.
'This is an epic journey for these tiny week-old fish,' he said.
'When they arrive at the reef, they are less than a centimetre long, and only a few days old, so to travel hundreds of kilometres they must be riding ocean currents to assist their migration,' said Dr Simpson.
Dr Simpson led a team of undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Edinburgh to collect the clownfish samples from throughout southern Oman.
'The southern coast of Oman is relatively isolated from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula so you find a lot of species there that you wouldn't find anywhere else in the world,' said Dr Simpson.
'There are only two coral reef systems along this coast, and they are separated by 400 km of surf beaches.
'In order to persist as a single species, we know Omani clownfish fish must occasionally migrate between these two populations.'
The team used DNA fingerprinting to identify local, long-distant migrant, and hybrid individuals from populations throughout the entire Omani clownfish (Amphiprion omanensis) species range.
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In Disney/Pixars hilarious underwater adventure "Finding Nemo," Nemo's father (left), a clownfish, travels all the way from the Great Barrier Reef to Sydney to find his son after the two are separated.
Around 400 fish were harmlessly caught during 92 dives, and a small fin clip taken for DNA analysis before releasing fish back to their colonies.
'Just like accents that allow us to tell an Englishman from an American, fish populations develop their own genetic signatures,' said co-author Hugo Harrison from the ARC COE CRS. 'By looking at the signature of each fish we can tell whether it originated there or not. It's like finding an Englishman in New York, they stand out.'
The DNA evidence identified that the majority of migrant fish had travelled from north to south and so, to test whether this was due to prevailing currents, the team developed an oceanographic model for the region.
'We found that the pattern of migration corresponded to the dominant ocean currents in the region that are driven by the winter monsoon,' said co-author Michel Claereboudt from Sultan Qaboos University.
As well as migrants, second generation hybrids were also identified in both populations, showing that after dispersal migrants had joined and reproduced with local populations.
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The researchers hope the study will allow them to safeguard the fish in the wild.
'This study is the furthest anyone has tracked the dispersal of coral reef fish, and it demonstrates that distant populations in the marine environment can be well connected,' said Simpson.
'Our ability to predict how far fish larvae disperse helps us to manage coral reef ecosystems.
'Understanding connectivity means we can protect populations that are most sensitive, harvest from populations that have a regular and consistent turn-over, and design coherent networks of marine protected areas'.
