A South Pacific Ocean current setting northward along the west coast of South America. It has been called the Humboldt Current because an early record of its temperature was taken by the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt in 1802. It has also been called the Peruvian or Chilean Current. The name Corriente de Peru was adopted by a resolution of the Ibero-American Oceanographic Conference at its Madrid-Malaga meeting in April 1935.