Tag Archives: waves

Seaweed Sea Monsters

I am fascinated by waves. I can easily spend hours at the shore watching the waves come rolling in. They are always changing and that is, in itself, interesting to me. Another thing I love is seeing the color in the water as the wave grows and breaks. As the wave gets close to breaking, the light shines through the water as it thins creating a green color that I love. However, on the visit to Santa Cruz, there was something new to see.

There is a lot of seaweed along the shore and it floats just below the surface. As the waves roll in, the weed floats along with them. The front of the wave rises up and the weed is just below the surface. As the light starts to come through the wave, the shadow of the seaweed shows itself. Strange patterns appear. They appear to move as if they are creatures lurking just below the surface. This is the area where a lot of the surfers are and it is almost as if some sea creature is hiding from them just out of sight. Then again, I might allow my imagination to get away from me some times!

Surfing

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Santa Cruz is a popular spot for surfing and I have previously posted some shots from there here. With a great sunny winter day and the weekend combining in our favor, we decided to take a trip to Santa Cruz and enjoy a walk along the coast. Plenty of people were doing likewise and there were lots of surfers in the water. I don’t think the conditions were ideal since there seemed to be long periods with little wave activity but they were a patient bunch.

The majority were further out into the water where the wave action was pretty variable. I few hardy souls were close in to the rocks where the waves could be a lot more active. I imagine this is a spot for those that are more confident in their ability to avoid getting pulped on the shore!

More Fort Point

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Continuing my theme of return visits to take Mum to places, Fort Point was on the itinerary. Always a cool place to visit on a nice day and it benefited from the swell resulting in some great waves crashing up against the fort. Also, we saw some guys taking advantage of the swell to do some surfing alongside the fort. Very cool although they had to know what they were doing since, if you rode all the way in, a rocky wall awaited you! (This also meant that choosing your parking space was a big deal unless you wanted the car to be covered in salt water!)

Point Bonita

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Mum’s visit meant quite a few trips to places we have scoped out before. We headed to Point Bonita on one day to visit the lighthouse there. This time we knew about the timing so were there in plenty of time. I won’t repeat what I wrote about the place this time so will share the shots from this visit. The one thing that was significantly different this time was that there was a strong swell coming in from the ocean so watching the waves crash up on the shoreline was a lot of fun. I can watch the sea crash ashore for hours at a time so this was great for me!

Waves

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There is a shot that I am on a quest to get right one day. I don’t know whether it is from growing up by the sea or not but I can sit and watch waves crashing ashore for a very long time without getting bored. One thing I particularly like is the way a wave that is just starting to break has a smooth shape to the top and backside that, as the light comes in from the front of the wave, glows a green color.

This appears for a brief time and then quickly disappears as the wave collapses in on itself. The smoothness and the color contract with the normal appearance of the sea and the waves and maybe this is what I like so much. I was down on the Pacific coast a few weeks back and the waves were pretty good with quite a swell coming in. The green glow was showing up a lot but this time I actually manged to catch some of it before it went away.

It still doesn’t replicate the image I have in my head from watching the waves but it is a lot closer than I have managed before. I will keep working on it so, if I get something better, don’t be surprised if it shows up here. The one below is from head on so doesn’t show the effect but it does give an idea of what it looks like from underneath.

Spouting Horn

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During our time on Kauai, we spent a fair amount of time with things planned to do and lots of activities lined up. However, it was a vacation so having a bit of time to gently amble about the place and look at the pretty stuff was still part of the schedule. One day we took a trip to the south side of the island to see what was down there. This side of the island is more heavily developed for tourism but it did have some cool stuff to see.

One such feature is Spouting Horn. This is a hole through the rock that funnels incoming waves and forces them out of a blowhole. Depending on the tide and the strength of the waves, this can produce a waterspout of over 50 feet. Apparently, there used to be more than one spout with the other one producing a far larger plume. However, this sprayed salt water onto a small part of the local plantation and reduced the crop yield so the plantation owner had explosives dropped in the hole and now it doesn’t do much at all.

There is another hole nearby that produces a sighing sound as the waves come in. You can read the local legends while you are there about the creature trapped under the rock and why it is unhappy. While I suspect this isn’t entirely true, it certainly does make quite a groaning sound as the water comes in which adds to the overall effect.

There is a plateau of rock in this area around the blowholes and they are certainly not keen on you going out there. The books are full of stories of people getting swept off by a higher than average wave or even getting swept into the blowholes themselves. Knowing had unpredictable the see can be, I don’t doubt this can and has happened. I am not so desperate to be close that I am going to try out getting closer. It all looked pretty good from the viewing platform. However, one chap was out there while we were there taking a look around. I hope he found it enjoyable. I think he lived.