Retroflect

Retroflection is the movement of an ocean current that doubles back on itself.

More commonly used to describe the way the mammalian intestine or uterus might turn back on itself, retroflection was first used in an oceanographic sense in 1970 by South African oceanographer Nils Bang, to describe the Agulhas Current which curves on itself at the southern tip of Africa to become the Aghulhas Return Current. Bang credited the inspiration for the metaphor to his wife, Alison Coombe Bang, a nursing sister, who mentioned the term during her midwifery studies. Bang's research, through the University of Cape Town, was done on a limited budget and with rudimentary equipment, yet his studies using closely spaced bathythermograph readings, were later corroborated by satellite thermal imagery. The term was then revived and is now common parlance among oceanographers. The Agulhas current's retroflection is now key to an understanding of its dynamics.