Did You Know?

The place where two oceans meet but do not mix

The picture above shows a strange natural phenomenon which occurs in the Gulf of Alaska when heavy 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 blue merging with a darker slate-blue.

A professor of ocean sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Ken Bruland explains that the image actually shows what occurs when sediment-laden water from glacial rivers empties out into the ocean: Glacier rivers in the summertime are like buzzsaws eroding away the mountains there," Bruland said. "In the process, they lift up all this material they call it glacial flour that can be carried out."
Once these glacial rivers pour out into the larger body of water, they are picked up by ocean currents, moving east to west, and begin to circulate there. This is one of the primary methods that iron found in the clay and sediment of the glacial runoff is transported to iron-deprived regions in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska.