WHIPPED OCEAN......fascinating!.

 

 

 

 

 

          Suddenly the  shoreline north of Sydney were transformed into  the Cappuccino Coast. Foam swallowed

 anentire  beach and half the nearby

        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.

 

   Boy in the bubble  bath: Tom Woods, 12, emerges from the clouds of

foam after deciding that surfing was not an  option 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.

 

 Whitewash: The foam  was so thick it came all the way up to the surf

 Club "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."

 

Children play among  all the foam which was been whipped up by

Cyclonic  conditions