• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.151-171
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• 2017

Most of oceanic current maps in the secondary school science and earth science textbooks have been made on the base of extensive in-situ measurements conducted by Japanese oceanographers during 1930s. According to up-to-date scientific knowledge on the currents in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea (YES), such maps have significant errors and are likely to cause misconceptions to students, thus new schematic map of ocean currents is needed. The currents in the YES change seasonally due to relatively shallow water depths, complex terrain, winds, and tides. These factors make it difficult to construct a unified ocean current map of the YES. Sixteen major items, such as the flow of the Kuroshio Current into the East China Sea and its northward path, the origin of the Tsushima Warm Current and its path into the Korea Strait, the path of Taiwan Warm Current, the Jeju Warm Current, the runoff pattern of the Yangtze River flow, the routes of the northward Yellow Sea Warm Current, the Chinese Coastal Current, and the West Korea Coastal Current off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, were selected to produce the schematic current map. Review of previous scientific researches, in-depth discussions through academic conferences, expert discussions, and consultations for three years since 2014 enabled us to produce the final ocean current maps for the YES after many revisions. Considering the complexity of the ocean currents, we made seven ocean current maps: two representative current patterns in summer and winter, seasonal current maps for upper layer and lower layer in summer and winter, and one representative surface current map. It is expected that the representative maps of the YES, connected to the current maps of the East Sea and the Northwest Pacific Ocean, would be widely utilized for diverse purposes in the secondary-school textbooks as well as high-level educational purposes and even for scientific scholarly experts.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.401-410
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• 2003

Three beaches of the Seogwang-ri coast in the western part of Wu Island, Jeju-do, are solely composed of rhodoliths (red algal nodules). The beach sediments are coarse sand to granule in size and they show the banded distribution according to size. Commonly the larger pebble-sized rhodoliths are concentrated near the rocky coast, resulting from the transportation of the nodules from shallow marine environments by intermittent typhoons. Based on the internal texture of the rhodoliths, it appears that crustose red algae, Lithophyllum sp., is the main contributor for the formation of the rhodolith. The coarse sand to granule-sized grains show that they started to grow from the nucleus as rhodoliths, but the surface was severely eroded by waves. However, the pebble to cobble-sized grains exhibit the complete growth pattern of rhodoliths and sometimes contain other calcareous skeletons. It is common that encrusting red algae are intergrown with encrusting bryozoan. The surface morphology of rhodolith tends to change from the concentric to domal shape towards the outer part. This suggests that the rhodolith grew to a certain stage by rolling, but it grew in more quiet condition without rolling as it became larger. Aragonite and calcite cements can be found in the pores within rhodoliths (conceptacle, intraskeletal pore in bryozoan, and boring), and this means that shallow marine cementation has occurred during their growth. Growth of numerous rhodoliths in shallow marine environment near the Seogwang-ri coast indicates that this area has suitable oceanographic conditions for their growth such as warm water temperature (about 19$^{\circ}C$ in average) and clear water condition due to the lack of terrestrial input of volcanoclastic sediments. Fast tidal current and high wave energy in the shallow water setting can provide suitable conditions enough for their rolling and growth. Typhoons passing this area every summer also influence on the growth of rhodoliths.