This study aims to investigate and answer the following scientific questions:
i. What is the contribution of the water exchange between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean in the observed increased productivity and fishery landings of the North Aegean in comparison to the South Aegean?
ii. What is the impact of wind-forced coastal upwelling observed each summer in the northeastern Aegean Sea on:
1) the fertilization of surface waters with nutrients,
2) the CO2 exchange rates between the atmosphere and ocean, and
3) the functioning of the ecosystem.
The study of the above phenomena requires the use of novel instrument, to be used in Greece for the first time (like the towed platform of measurements and the HF coastal circulation radar). The use of new 
instruments and methodologies will be combined with older methods, in a strategy of development of viable collaborations through the formation of common work groups and collaborations in using measurement platforms between the research groups from different organizations involved in the project. In more detail, the study of the Dardanelles contribution will require the deployment of a mooring east of Lemnos, providing measurements complementary to the ones of the HF coastal circulation radar already in place in eastern Lemnos. This will provide for the first time measurements of the horizontal flux of buoyancy, nutrients, organic carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen entering the North Aegean through the Straits, as well as enabling the Aegean-specific calibration of biooptical satellite measurements.
For the study of wind-forced coastal upwelling in the eastern Aegean, a temperature sensor array will be deployed for recording the upwelling of cold waters during summer Etesian winds, in combination with a fast-response field group of scientists responsible to record the environmental and oceanographic state along a transect, immediately after upwelling events. Thus, the presently proposed project will constitute the first systematic study of coastal upwelling and its impacts on the fertilization and functioning of the Aegean Sea ecosystem.
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