is the sea actually white or is it really blue?

Answer 1

The water it clear, the blue is a reflection of the sky.

Answer 2

Sea is mostly blue but reflection of the sky is only partially true. If you fill up a bath tub you'll see the water turns blue with depth, reason being that all other colours have been filtered out(all to do with wavelength so to speak!) leaving only the blue. Sorry, that should be absorbed rather than filtered!

Answer 3

It is actually blue. Although the water in a glass appears clear and colourless, water has a slight blue colour that becomes more visible in large amounts. That's why the ocean appears more blue where it's deeper. It is not just a reflection of the sky.

Answer 4

The sea is clear and the blue appears from the reflection of the sky, however when it seems brown it is because the sand is mixed into the water, especially if it has been rough.
I work on the beaches everyday so I know these things!!

Answer 5

Calculating chlorophyll from measurements of water colour is one of the successes of optical oceanography over the last 30 years or so. As a result we can now use satellite measurements to tell us how well plants in the ocean are growing.

Like plants on land, plants growing in water contain chlorophyll, a molecule that allows the plant to trap the energy in sunlight for photosynthesis. Chlorophyll absorbs blue and red light, so it looks green to us. That is why grass and leaves are green.

The most important plants in the sea are phytoplankton - microcscopic plants that float suspended in the water.

Where there are a lot of phytoplankton, most of the blue light is absorbed, so the water looks green. Where there are none (or very few), the blue light is not absorbed, so the water looks blue.

Scientists use the balance between blue and green (the blue-green ratio) to calculate how much chlorophyll the water contains. This allows them to create world-wide maps of chlorophyll from satellite images of ocean colour.

Bright green usually tells you there are millions of microscopic plants in the water, but a very similar green can be seen where rivers wash soil into the sea. Optical oceanographers around the world are hard at work trying to tell the two apart.

In the open ocean away from land, particles that scatter light and colour the water green, are almost certainly tiny plants. In this type of water we can now calculate chlorophyll from ocean colour measurement and be confident about the results. Scientists call this type of water Case I water.

Near land it is not always so simple. Rivers often bring mud and the remains of dead plants into the sea. This mixture has a yellow-brown colour. Where it mixes with sea water the ocean is coloured green, a colour which is easily mistaken for the green of chlorophyll. This is called Case II water.

Chlorophyll maps of Case II water tend to show higher chlorophyll than what is actually there. Optical oceanographers are still working on reliable ways to solve this problem.

Answer 6

pure water is almost completely clear, with a very very faint cyan-blue colouration (which is why the exceedingly pure, deep and unpolluted water atop pure white sand in some beauty spots looks to be a slightly different hue than the sky)

mostly though it either reflects the sky, or transmits the colour of the seabed and pollutants or things living in it. which is why you get sea green, or an ocean that looks grey on overcast days.

the colour of water from your home supply is no guide as it has chlorine added!

Answer 7

The sea is an aqua marine color, which comes from the reflection of the sky. At night, when you walk across the beach & look at the sea it is a dark color with the exception of the reflection of the stars.

Answer 8

Blue. The colour of pure water is Blue. But because so little of the water we drink/ bathe in/ whatever is not pure, it appears clear. There are minute amounts of the blue colouring in each drop of water. So small that even a gallon of water will not show up the Blue colouring. But the ocean is much bigger than 1 gallon of water, so I suppose that the blue colouring would show up.

Answer 9

the sea is clear but the sky makes it blue looking

Answer 10

The sea is actually blue,it is NOT a reflection of the sky (to those who think its clear)its blue at night too DUH!, go out at night and shine a torch on it. If it was a reflection then explain why inside a wreck at 20M is the water still blue?

Answer 11

Water is actually clear, it's just the reflection from the sky that makes it look blue.