VERY NEAR- Departures and arrivals of barnacle larvae onshore: very near shore physical processes and behaviour in SW Portugal

Many intertidal and shallow subtidal benthic species have planktonic larvae and so, during their life cycle, they must depart from and arrive to the benthic environment (recruitment).  Physical processes are distinct in the near shore (e.g. internal tidal bores) as compared to the offshore, and oceanography of waters immediately adjacent to shore (within 100 m to a few kilometres from shore) has not been well studied. Also, there is considerable evidence that local retention instead of dispersal over great distances even for long-lived larvae may be considerably more prevalent than previously thought. Target species of this study are the intertidal barnacles Pollicipes pollicipes and Chthamalus montagui and target coast is the SW of Portugal. Both species are abundant in Continental Portugal, although P. pollicipes is restricted to very exposed shores.  The general objectives of this project are: to describe small scale temporal variability of physical variables and larval abundance in the very near shore of two shores with two probable different oceanographic conditions; to search for evidence of internal tidal bores occurrence in the very near shore; to understand the oceanographic-onshore linkage by use of remote sensing at appropriate scales; to generalize the observation of higher recruitment in afternoons to both species and in different shores; to corroborate hypotheses derived from models (very near shore model and near substratum model) explaining the pattern of higher recruitment in the afternoon; to understand how recruitment of these species is related to very near shore oceanography and / or behaviour.