A great current sets to the eastward, crossing the ocean just south of the equator. It extends past Samoa and passes on nearly to the coast of Mexico, touching the Galapagos Islands, Clipperton Island, and especially the Revillagigedos. This may account for the number of Polynesian species found on these islands, about which they are freely mixed with immigrants from the mainland of Mexico.
From the Revillagigedos[24] the current moves northward and westward, passing the Hawaiian Islands and thence onward to the Ladrones. The absence in Hawaii of most of the characteristic fishes of Polynesia and Micronesia may be in part due to the long detour made by these currents, as the conditions of life in these groups of islands are not very different. Northeast of Hawaii is a great spiral current, moving with the hands of the watch, forming what is called Fleurieu's Whirlpool. This does not reach the coast of California. This fact may help to account for the almost complete distinction in the shore fishes of Hawaii and California.[25]
No other group of islands in the tropics has a fish fauna so isolated as that of Hawaii. The genera are largely the ordinary tropical types. The species are largely peculiar to these islands.
The westward current from Hawaii reaches Luzon and Formosa. It is deflected to the northward and, joining a northward current from Celebes, it forms the Kuro Shiwo or Black Stream of Japan, which strews its tropical species in the rock pools along the Japanese promontories as far as Tokio. Then, turning into the open sea, it passes northward to the Aleutian Islands, across to Sitka. Thence it moves southward as a cold current, bearing Ochotsk-Alaskan types southward as far as the Santa Barbara Islands, to which region it is accompanied by species of Aleutian origin. A cold return current seems to extend southward in Japan, along the east shore perhaps as far as Matsushima. A similar current in the sea to the west of Japan extends still further to the southward, to Noto, or beyond.
It is, of course, not necessary that the movements of a species in an oceanic current should coincide with the direction of the current. Young fishes, or fresh-water fishes, would be borne along with the water. Those that dwell within floating bodies of seaweed would go whither the waters carry the drifting mass. But free-swimming fishes, as the mackerel or flying-fishes, might as readily choose the reverse direction. To a free-swimming fish the temperature of the water would be the only consideration. It is thus evident that a current which to certain forms would prove a barrier to distribution, to others would be a mere convenience in movement.
In comparing the Japanese fauna with that of Australia, we find some trace of both these conditions. Certain forms are perhaps excluded by cross-currents, while certain others seem to have been influenced only by the warmth of the water. A few Australian types on the coast of Chile seem to have been carried over by the cross-currents of the South Atlantic.
It is fair to say that the part taken by oceanic currents in the distribution of shore fishes is far from completely demonstrated. The evidence that they assist in such distribution is, in brief, as follows:
1. The young of shore fishes often swim at the surface.
2. The young of very many tropical fishes drift northward in the Gulf Stream and the Japanese Kuro Shiwo.
3. The faunal isolation of Hawaii may be correlated with the direction of the oceanic currents.