Physical Oceanography and its Role in Shaping Marine Ecosystems and Coastal Habitats

Physical oceanography acts as a primary driver for marine ecosystems' structure, diversity, and dynamics of coastal habitats. This research aims to understand how key oceanographic processes such as thermohaline circulation, submesoscale currents, tidal forcing, benthic-pelagic coupling, and light availability are interrelated to regulate marine ecosystem distributions and productivity from varied coastal and open-ocean regions. Combining multi-source observational data from the Bay of Bengal and its nearby eastern Indian Ocean coasts, alongside outputs of a hydrodynamic model, describes seasonally varied physical driving forces and correlates with phytoplankton bloom dynamics, habitat distributions, and coastal erosion processes. Correlations analysis confirmed significant relation between Sea surface temperature anomaly and chlorophyll-a concentration (r = 0.78; p < 0.01) indicating temperature stratification as primary driver for primary productivity. Nutrient flux to euphotic zone was significantly explained by variability of submesoscale eddy activity (explained 34% variance). Hydrodynamic modelling at coastal zones confirms that wave-driven sediment flux and current-driven erosion plays significant role in changing available habitat area at benthos. Effect of anthropocentric activities, marine light pollution and distribution of micro-plastics are also examined through perspective of physical transport process. Findings conclude need of incorporating physical oceanography perspective in planning and managing marine ecosystems. This paper offers process based regional specific outlook to increasing studies on ocean ecosystem linkages that may be relevant for fisheries sustainability and coastal resilience and adaptive governance for climate change mitigation.