A picture from the Gulf of Alaska that has been making the rounds on the Internet for the last few years -- shows a strange natural phenomenon that occurs when heavy, sediment-laden water from glacial valleys and rivers pours into the open ocean. There in the gulf, the two types of water run into each other, a light, almost electric blue merging with a darker slate-blue.
That original photo, however, originates from a 2007 research cruise of oceanographers studying the role that iron plays in the Gulf of Alaska, and how that iron reaches certain areas in the northern Pacific.
Ken Bruland, professor of ocean sciences at University of California-Santa Cruz, was on that cruise. In fact, he was the one who snapped the pic. He said the purpose of the cruise was to examine how huge eddies -- slow moving currents -- ranging into the hundreds of kilometers in diameter, swirl out from the Alaska coast into the Gulf of Alaska.
As for that specific photo, Bruland said that it shows the plume of water pouring out from one of these sediment-rich rivers and meeting with the general ocean water. I
t’s also a falsehood that these two types of water don’t mix at all, he said.
“They do eventually mix, but you do come across these really strong gradients at these specific moments in time,” he said. Such borders are never static, he added, as they move around and disappear altogether, depending on the level of sediment and the whims of the water.
Mythbusting 'the place where two oceans meet' in the Gulf of Alaska