Nancy Reinhart, Age 13, Of Seattle, Wash., for her question:

What is the Japan Current?

The gulf stream is an arm of a mighty system of ocean currents that eddies around the north Atlantic Ocean. A similar system of eddying currents sweeps around the north pacific ocean. One arm is the north equatorial current that runs 9000 miles westward from panama to the Philippines. There it splits apart and some of the streams runs northward, brushing the islands of Japan.

This arm, a counterpart of the gulf stream in the Atlantic, is called the Japan current. It also is called the Kuroshio Current, which means the black current. 'This name comes from its deep, dark violet blue waters.