Beauty and Biology of Seafoam

By Bruce G. Marcot, Ecology Picture of the Week:

No, this is not detergent, or pollution, on the beach.  It is natural seafoam, on an autumn ocean strand in southern Oregon, USA. 

The wonderful colors result from interference that scatters the various spectra into rainbow-like patterns.  But what exactly is seafoam?

Seafoam is organic.  It is produced by microscopic phytoplankton.  The bubbles arise from agitation of the surf and consist of inorganic and organic particles of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids.  The proteins provide surface tension to allow the bubbles to form.  Seafoam is actually a complicated biochemical amalgam.

One study (Craig et al. 1989) found that the organic content of seafom includes a rather amazing array of organic carbon, sugars, phenolics, amino acides, and amino sugars.  

Living among the surging surf and seafoam along sandy beaches are gulls and many shorebirds.  And one odd duck.

  --Bruce G. Marcot

Image and text © Bruce G. Marcot, Ph.D. Research Wildlife Ecologist,
who produces the Ecology Picture of the Week website.