Color of the sea |
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Back in 1883, the scientist Spring, examining distilled water in long (five-meter) tubes, enclosed in opaque cases, discovered that the water in these tubes has a clear and delicate blue color. Every body of water in nature receives light from the sun. Falling on the surface of the water, the light is partly reflected from it, and partly penetrates into the depths. Light passed into water and refracted is partly absorbed by water, partly scattered in it, and different colors of the spectrum (corresponding to different wavelengths) are absorbed and scattered unevenly. The first, at shallow depths, are absorbed by the red rays and the last, at very great depths, bluish-green. As far as scattering is concerned, the opposite occurs. Blue rays are scattered the most, and red ones are least scattered. The color of the sea depends mainly on those rays which, due to scattering, eventually leave the water and enter the eye of the observer. Thus, the rays strongly scattered and poorly absorbed by water determine the "color of the sea".
In the open sea, the color of the water is mainly determined by the number of planktonic organisms - small animals and plants, passively carried by the water. The amount of plankton is not the same throughout the year - in spring and autumn it is the most; at this time, the transparency of the sea decreases, youthfully turns green. In some areas there is so much plankton that the sea changes its color noticeably. This phenomenon is called "sea bloom". Thus, the yellowish waters of the Azov and Baltic seas are colored green by algae. Peridinene algae and copepods sometimes give the water of polar basins a reddish tint. Algae Trichodesmia erythreum, during its flowering, paints the Red Sea with red spots stretching for hundreds of kilometers. Once off the coast of Murmansk, the sea turned pink due to crustaceans. There were so many of them that the sailing whalers slowed down. In some areas of Antarctica, a dark creamy-green color of the sea was encountered, caused by an enormous amount of diatom algae. The farther from the shores and the less plankton in the upper layers of the ocean, the bluer its color. No wonder they say that blue is the color of the sea desert. A lot of dust, organic matter and foam always accumulate near the coast on the sea surface. With excitement, all this is knocked down into stripes that prevent the formation of ripples. Due to this, during a weak wind, the calm sea becomes spotty - stripes covered with ripples alternate with strips of calm water. In general, off the coast, the sea, as a rule, takes on a yellowish tint. When you go deeper into the water, the intensity of illumination quickly decreases, twilight deepens, from green they turn blue, blue, violet, and finally complete darkness sets in. Sinking into the sea near Bermuda to a depth of 923 meters in a special apparatus called a bathysphere, very interesting observations were made by the American explorer William Beebe. First of all, he was struck by the transition from the yellow-golden, surface world to the green, underwater one. At a depth of 60 meters, it became difficult to determine the color of the water - it was either blue-green or green-blue. Below the spectroscope showed a change from blue to violet. At a depth of 300 meters, the sea looked blackish-gray-blue. From 610 meters there was absolute, eternal darkness. The grandiose phenomenon of the glow of the sea and the finding of deep-sea organisms, completely dotted with glow organs, gave rise to the opinion that in the depths of the sea, where the sun's rays almost do not penetrate, their light is replaced by rays from glowing deep animals. Further research has shown the fallacy of this opinion. For sailors and residents of sea coasts, the glow “of the sea is a common phenomenon, sometimes extremely annoying, when the nets set in the sea and the frightened fish move away from them shine and light up with cold fire.
The light of luminous organisms is diverse. Pyroeomas change their light from bright red to orange, green, blue. In one cephalopod, some glowing organs glow with ultramarine, others with blue, and others with ruby-red light. Some areas of the ocean are famous for their glow. So, near the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait, the so-called "sea of milk" is known, described by Lieutenant Pornen from the cruiser "Armida":
Accordingly, with the illumination of the depths in a certain way, as if over floors, planktonic organisms are distributed. In general, living organisms that inhabit the sea are very sensitive to light. Since the illumination changes during the day, some organisms make daily long journeys in a vertical direction, keeping to a certain (illumination. For example, the Mizida crustaceans of the Caspian Sea during the day stay at a depth of 150-350 meters, and at night they are caught several meters from the surface. During the day, you have to experience water pressures that differ by two to three dozen atmospheres! The calanus crustacean in the Atlantic Ocean daily makes "walks" along the vertical of 500 meters. At the same time, off the coast of Novaya Zemlya during the polar summer, when the sun does not set and lighting conditions hardly change, the crustacean does not make these journeys.
Interesting facts of great economic importance have been established in connection with the color of the sea. For example, the “Researcher” ship in Kandalaksha Bay found that at a depth of 10–20 meters, herring is worst caught in white nets, better in green nets, and even better in dark red nets. Why - try to guess for yourself. N. Kahn Similar publications |
The sea is often referred to as "blue". What is it really like?
But blue rays mostly come out of clear water. In muddy water, rays of other colors are scattered more strongly.
The sea glows in different ways and in different colors, depending on which organisms are the source of its glow. Some organisms glow continuously, while others only when irritated by shocks: from waves, oars and the movement of a steamer, etc.
Almost the color of the sea is observed using a simple device called the Fotel-Ole scale. This device consists of test tubes filled with solutions, the color of which is compared to the color of the sea. The color of the sea water makes it possible to distinguish between waters of different origins. One can, for example, clearly see when moving from the shores of Europe to America a very sharp transition from the greenish waters of the North Sea to the blue waters of the Atlantic and, further, from the blue waters of the Gulf Stream to the cold, green waters of the Labrador Current.
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