SAN DIEGO — Beachgoers along a California state beach may have done a double take when they stepped onto the sand recently and saw pink waves rolling onshore.
The unusual pink hue at Torrey Pines State Beach and Natural Reserve wasn’t an art installation gone wrong but an environmentally-safe dye deployed by a team of researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Washington.
The National Science Foundation-funded study aims to learn how freshwater plumes from estuaries interact with the ocean environment when they collide, specifically with breaking waves, according to a news release.
“The results of this study will provide crucial data for quantifying the spread of sediment, pollutants, larvae, and other important material in the nearshore environment,” according to Scripps Oceanography.
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Beginning on Jan. 20, the Plumes in Nearshore Conditions, or PiNC, research team released fluorescent pink dyes in the estuary and surrounding coastline at Los Peñasquitos Lagoon within the state beach. The dye helps track the processes when plumes meet the surf.
To monitor the freshwater plume interactions, researchers used drones to survey from above and watched the pink water from the ground and in the water on jet skis for about 24 hours. The team also uses sensors on the sea floor and moorings to measure ocean currents, and wave heights and collect other data.
A new drone system is observing the plumes with a camera “that has nearly 100 times the capability to distinguish the visible light spectrum than our phone camera,” Research team member and Scripps postdoctoral scholar Alex Simpson said.
While the pink tides were in the name of science, the above views were also beautiful.
Researchers chose Los Peñasquitos Lagoon because other studies have focused on large-scale freshwater plumes. The lagoon provides an excellent small river plume example to study.
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“Los Peñasquitos Lagoon is a very dynamic system, with different elements changing each day, often even over the course of one day,” Simpson said. “I am looking forward to seeing how the balance of physical forces—ocean waves competing against river outflow—determine the fate of the estuary water as it enters the coastal ocean on the days that we conduct our field experiment.”
Even though the dye is non-toxic, beachgoers have been asked to use other parts north or south of the estuary on release dates because of the active research.
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This isn’t the first time science has been tickled pink. A 2015 experiment by Scripps Oceanography scientists was used to track beach pollution dynamics near the U.S.-Mexican border with pink dye.
The experiment is set to run through February with two more dye releases.