What Is the Humboldt Ocean Current?

This cold Pacific current runs along South America's coast, creating some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Learn how it works and who it was named for in this episode of BrainStuff.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren boge obam Here. In December of eighteen o two,
a small sailing ship called the Casino Set sail from Cajal,
Peru northward along the South American coastline towards guaya Quill
in present day Ecuador, a trip of about seven hundred
miles or about one thousand, one hundred kilometers. One of

(00:23):
the ship's passengers was a thirty three year old Prussian aristocrat,
Alexander von Humboldt. A mining engineer by training, Humboldt had
an instatiable curiosity about nature that led him to roam
the planet, studying plants and animals, as well as phenomena
ranging from magnetic rocks to river systems and ocean currents.
Fresh from studying the value of backguando as manure in Cajao,
Humboldt used the sailing trip to investigate a powerful cold

(00:46):
current that flowed from the tip of Chile to northern Peru,
ranging from just off shore to about six hundred miles
off the coast that's just under a thousand kilometers. The
currents existence had been known for centuries to sailors and fishermen,
but no scientists had ever systematically studied the flow. Humbolt
carefully measured the water temperature and the speed, and continued
on his journey, which eventually would lead him to Mexico.

(01:09):
Humboldt's work was the beginning of scientific understanding of what's
now known as the Humboldt Current or the Peru Current.
The current helps hold warm, moist air off the coast,
keeping the climate cool. It also pulls plankton rich water
from deep in the Pacific to the surface, feeding a
vast number and variety of fish and birds, and creating
the richest marine ecosystem on the planet. Its fishing grounds

(01:30):
provide about six percent of the world's catch, and the
Humboldt currents nutrients support the marine food chain of the
Galapagos Islands and influence its climate as well. It has
helped to make possible the archipelagos incredible biodiversity. In that sense,
the Humbolt Current also helped shape the development of evolutionary theory.
The Galapagos provided the living laboratory for another nineteenth century scientist,

(01:52):
Charles Darwin, whose paradigm shifting work on the origin of
the species was published in eighteen fifty nine, the year
of Humboldt's death. Darwin himself was inspired by the work
of Humboldt, who might be the most important scientist that
we don't hear much about in the early tobid eighteen hundreds,
though he might have been the most renowned researcher on
the planet. Humboldt was the first to investigate the relationship

(02:14):
between mean temperature and elevation, and came up with the
concept of maps with isothermal lines that delineate areas with
the same temperature at a given time. He did important
early work on the origin of tropical storms. Most importantly,
Humboldt altered the way that scientists see the natural world
by finding interconnections. The scientist invented the concept of a
web of life, what he called this great chain of

(02:37):
causes and effects. Some consider him to be the first ecologist.
He was ahead of the curve on understanding environmental problems
such as deforestation and its effect upon climate, which he
first observed around Lake Valencia and Venezuela back in eighteen hundred.
Humboldt was also a predecessor to Albert Einstein as a
scientist with a strong interest in social justice. He was

(02:57):
a critic of colonialism and supported revolutionary movements in South America,
and also criticized the US, a country he otherwise admired
for its institution of slavery. We spoke via email with
Aaron Sachs, a history professor at Cornell University and author
of The Humboldt Current nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots
of American Environmentalism. He thinks that rather than focusing on

(03:18):
Humboldt scientific discoveries, it's more important to look at the
insights and approaches to the work that were based upon
his research and observations. He said to me his version
of ecology was significant not just because he stressed interconnection,
but because he combined it with a social and ethical perspective.
The fact of interconnection had certain implications with regard to
human responsibilities towards each other and the environment. It was

(03:40):
a cosmopolitan, open minded ecology. Today's episode was written by
Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff
is production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more on this and lots of other interconnected topics, visit
our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for
more podcast us from my heart Radio is the I

(04:01):
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H