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Sydney: The Cappuccino Coast
Richard Shears of "The Daily Mail" explains this freak phenomenon of sea
foam on the north shore of Australia.
"Suddenly the
shoreline north of Sydney were transformed into the Cappuccino Coast. Foam
swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including
the local lifeguards' centre, in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New
South Wales.
One minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the next
they were swallowed up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they
could
puff it out of
their hands and watch it float away.
It stretched
for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen at the beach for
more than three decades. 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. As for 12-year-old
beachgoer Tom Woods, who has been surfing since he was two, riding a wave
was out of the question. 'Me and my mates just spent the afternoon leaping
about in that stuff,' he said.
'It was quite cool to touch and it was really weird. It was like clouds of
air - you could hardly feel it.'
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Boy in the bubble bath: Tom Woods, 12, emerges from the clouds of foam after
deciding that surfing was not an option
Whitewash: The foam was so thick it came all the way up to the surf club
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