‘Unusual’ photo shows distinctly colored bodies of water colliding off Cayman Islands

Optical illusions thrive in the world’s oceans, and one of the most beautiful was captured in a photograph taken recently off the Cayman Islands, 270 miles south of Cuba.

Carl Edwards of the Cayman Islands Department of Environment was on the north side of Grand Cayman when he saw what appeared to be two different ocean horizons zippered together by a strip of white foam.

On one side was the deep blue, while the other was light blue.

The Department of Energy shared his photo Monday on Facebook, and reported it “reveals a fascinating phenomenon” that is often misinterpreted.

“This not a photo of the reef, but of two bodies of water meeting inside the North Sound: open ocean water (light blue) and sound water (dark blue),” the department explained.

“The dark water is colored by the red tannin from the mangroves and phytoplankton (which makes the water look green) from the back of the North Sound. It is unusual that both can be seen so easily.”

As for the white strip, it was sea foam, the department said.

The Facebook post has gotten hundreds of reactions and shares since Monday, including multiple people who admitted they had wrongly assumed in the past the differing colors meant shallow versus deep water.

The Caymans are a trio of islands, and “North Sound is the largest protected bay” on the biggest of the three, Grand Cayman. The sound’s entrance is “problematic” due to strong winds and “is in constant flux, with coral reefs growing in different directions each year, storms moving sand across channels and charts being unreliable,” according to Marinas.com.

This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 2:31 PM with the headline "‘Unusual’ photo shows distinctly colored bodies of water colliding off Cayman Islands."