The Lüderitz upwelling cell and Orange River cone (LUCORC) area, a transboundary region between South Africa and Namibia, is considered to be an environmental barrier to transport of ichthyoplankton from the southern to the northern Benguela upwelling ecosystems. We use environmental data and modelling to assess the potential mechanisms responsible for this barrier: environmental data were extracted from the 1 × 1° World Ocean Atlas 2001 database and used to build maps of annual mean salinity, temperature, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen and nutrient concentrations; outputs of a regional circulation model were used in an individual-based model to assess the transport of passive particles from the southern to the northern Benguela. The data show no clear... |