Sea Foam

This is amazing. This happened in August 2007, when the Australian shoreline at Yamba, north of Sydney, was swallowed up by a layer of foam.

Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface by the current towards the shore. As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam. The foam “surfs” towards shore until the wave “crashes”, tossing the foam into the air.

“It’s the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender,” explains a marine expert. “The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes.” In this case, storms off the New South Wales Coast and further north off Queensland had created a huge disturbance in the ocean, hitting a stretch of water where there was a particularly high amount of the substances which form into bubbles.

Sea Foam 1

Sea Foam 2

Sea Foam 3

source : Diving Malaysia

Related posts:

  1. Ruined City Under The Sea
  2. Weirdest Sea Creatures
  3. Frozen Sea
  4. The Expert To Cross The River
  5. Funny Poem


RSS feed | Trackback URI

3 Comments »

Comment by big boy
2008-05-21 19:15:25

do those stupid people even know what they playing in. Dead secreted plant stuff, dead fish and whale sperm.

Comment by Steve S
2009-12-05 23:38:18

Strictly speaking, we’re all made of dead plants, fish and, I would assume, some whale sperm. There’s no obvious reason that sea foam would be harmful to people.

 
 
Comment by Rob
2009-04-03 20:05:12

Yeah, I don’t think I’d be playing in that stuff. Probably has a nasty fishy odor to it.

Reminds me of the end of the Ghostbusters movie, though…

 
Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Subscribe to comments via email
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
Comments will be moderated due to our Comment Policy.
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.

Trackback responses to this post