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  • Why does the Atlantic and Pacific oceans’ water not mix?
    ByMimi Gerstell, Former head of Ocean Tech program, Fla Inst of Tech, Jensen Beach

    Atlantic water eventually enters the Pacific via the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, an eastward flow. Pacific water could get into the Atlantic the same way, but the net flow of Atlantic water, especially the deep water, is southward. So the long-term fate of a chunk of cold, saline water that sinks in the Greenland Sea is, it goes south in the deep Atlantic, then eastward past Africa, into the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where it eventually rises -- highly anoxic because it has not been in contact with the surface for 1000 or 1400 years!
    You don't say what other mixing mechanisms you had in mind. The Panama Canal does not provide enough of a conduit for any significant mixing.

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