Nils Bang

Conducted along the length of the current, south of latitude 27°S, this 18-day project, from 6 to 24 March 1969, included three ships: the University of Cape Town's research vessel Thomas B. Davie, the CSIR's Meiring Naude, and the Department of Sea Fisheries' Africana II. Most of data gathered was obtained from systematically calibrated surface thermograph records from the ships:[13] Thomas B. Davie operated from west to east working the segment between Mossel Bay and the Great Fish River (as far as 500 miles south), while Meiring Naude and Africana II worked simultaneously from east to west, the former covering the Kosi Bay to East London segment and the latter the Mossel Bay to St Helena Bay segment. A CSIR aircraft—equipped with an infrared radiation thermometer for measuring ocean temperatures from a height of 1,000 feet—flew traverses across the current from Cape St Lucia to Cape Town. Some 10,000 sea water samples were taken and a similar number of temperature readings.[14] An uncharted 9,500-foot seamount found in the course of the cruise was named the Davie Seamount.

The findings of the Agulhas Current Project showed that a key to understanding the current's dynamics was the way it turns back on itself,[15] a phenomenon Bang described as "retroflection",[16][17][18] more commonly used to describe the way the mammalian intestine or uterus can curve back on itself. The term has since become common parlance among oceanographers.

Following studies of the Southern Benguela system off South Africa's west coast, Bang and Andrews anticipated and subsequently discovered the strong equatorward shelf edge frontal jet off the Cape Peninsula—an intrusion of Agulhas Current water—which they named the Good Hope Jet.[19][20] The jet plays a vital role in carrying the eggs and larvae of a range fish from their food-poor[21] Agulhas Bank spawning grounds to more conducive inshore nursery areas.[22]

Nils Bang was born in Durban, South Africa, on 13 September 1941. His father was Daniel Nielson Bang, a Zulu linguist and son of Norwegian missionaries, and his mother was Anna Maria Bang (née Linde), the daughter of Swedish missionaries. He had a younger sister and brother, Anaida and Knut Olav. He attended Merchiston Preparatory School and later Harward, both in Pietermaritzburg. During his school years, he was a sea cadet and attended a Commonwealth sea cadet course in Britain. He studied first at the University of Natal and then at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded a PhD in 1974. (Thesis:The Southern Benguela System: Finer Oceanic Structure and Atmospheric Determinants).

He married Mary Alison Coombe, a midwife, on 21 August 1965, in Pietermaritzburg. He credited his inspiration for the "retroflection" metaphor to his wife who had taught him the term during her midwifery studies. In 1967, their first daughter, Kirsten, was born in Cape Town, followed by two more daughters, Solveig in 1970 and Janice in 1973.

Nils Bang died, aged 36, of colon cancer, in Durban's Entabeni Hospital on 2 December 1977.[23] At dawn on 27 January 1978, members of the CSIR staff along with his friend, retired Port Captain Jimmy Deacon, aboard the research ship Meiring Naude, committed his ashes to the sea between Umkomaas and Scottburgh on the Natal south coast.