Foaming Ocean Whips Beachgoers into a Frenzy
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 08.29.07
Beach-side foam party gone out of control? Not quite. A shoreline north of Sydney, Australia was transformed into the "Cappuccino Coast," as one journalist put it, with foam swallowing up an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the lifeguard HQ.
A phenomenon not seen on the beach for more than 30 years, the frothy mix stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific. Unnamed scientists say that the foam was caused by impurities in the ocea, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish, and—eww—secretions from seaweed.
Here's how the eggheads tried to explain the oversize bubble bath:
As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes bubbles to swirl upwards. Massed together, all those bubbles whip together to form foam, which then "surfs" toward shore until the wave crashes and tosses the foam into the air.
"It's the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender," says a marine expert. "The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes."
Storms off the New South Wales Coast and further north of Queensland created this massive ocean disturbance by coincidentally hitting a stretch of water that was particularly rich in bubble-forming substances.
Or maybe nature just felt like getting its freak on. ::The Daily Mail
Interesting phenomenon. The pics from this are fascinating; they make me just want to run around in it...until I realize that the foam is made out of dead fish, seaweed, and chemicals. Talk about a buzzkill.
I bet it's good for your hair. :D
It smells pretty nasty and when it's condensed it is a black stinky liquid. Saltwater aquariums need skimmers to get rid of all the organics that make it up.
I've seen fresh water foam. Usually in spring when there is pollen coating everything. I must admit it looks pretty nasty.
Foam like this (well, mabye not exactly like this...in much small quantities) is commonly used as in indicator that wastewater is being improperly disposed of into creeks.
I used to look for areas of fresh water foam in trout streams. The fish used to hang around underneath it. I think pollen does contribute to this effect in places with relatively little human impact. Water where I grew up had tannin and related plant stuff in it from bogs.
Interesting. There are a lot of bath gels for sale made from seaweed.
Foam brought up from seaweed in normal lakes and ocean waters was described by Irving Langmuir in 1938, now known as Langmuir Circulation.
Jerome Smith at UC San Diego in 1998 pointed out that the amount of foam during a storm is proportional to the intensity of wavebreaking.