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Posted on: August 28, 2007 8:45 PM, by Peter Etnoyer
Poor Aussies in Sydney got nailed by a giant mixture of salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed that whipped up into a froth by storms off Queensland. The giant sea foam buried beaches and buildings, and stretches for 30 meters out into the Pacific. The kids are apparently playing in it, trying to surf it, and dancing about having a good old time.
Read about it and see more pictures of Cappucino Beach here at the Daily Mail .
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Comments
Wow! I had seen a picture, but thought it was ice. Someone had written a paper a couple of years back. Sea foam does increase the albedo of the ocean, and hence is a cooling climate forcing. If somehow it could be made more frequent it would help combat global warming. Of course given the immense volume of ocean (they average what something like 4KM deep), it is unimaginable that we could ever make enough soap to do so.
Posted by: bigTom | August 28, 2007 10:04 PM
Poor girls. Exposing themselves to weird chemicals that came from THE ABYSS. (or maybe from the sewage and factories?)
"Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed."
When they say "chemicals" they really mean "synthetic chemicals", right? I really wonder about that part of the foam's composition.
Posted by: Kiki | August 29, 2007 2:04 AM
Gross. I'd imagine it would not smell like roses. Would I play in it? No.
Posted by: DM | August 29, 2007 5:36 AM
Yeah, this seems really dangerous. I mean, you can't see what you're stepping on. How much dead fish and seaweed does it take to make that much foam, anyway?
Posted by: Jason Adams | August 29, 2007 5:40 AM
People spend lots of money on seaweed baths and fish pills. Why don't get it directly from the source (the ocean)?
Posted by: chris | August 29, 2007 7:36 AM
Unbelievable. At first I thought Sydney had been hit by some freak blizzard (now, that would have been unbelievable).
Posted by: Jim Lemire | August 29, 2007 8:06 AM
oh, and since when were "salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed" considered impurities?
Posted by: Jim Lemire | August 29, 2007 8:07 AM
down here in Oz we use the suffix m for metres, not miles, the foam only extended to sea for 30 metres NOT 30 miles ( a fantastic idea though - just think about sailing through it)
Posted by: sagan | August 31, 2007 2:40 PM
Thx, Sagan. Fixed that.
Posted by: Peter Etnoyer | September 3, 2007 8:43 AM
This looks like a rave I went to once when I was in college.
Posted by: Organic Chemistry | September 27, 2007 4:13 AM