Why is the water in the Caribbean clear?

The water is clear due to the absence of plankton and suspended particles. Plankton is the base of the food web in all oceans and, because there is little plankton in the tropics, tropical ocean water is nearly sterile in comparison with the fertile waters of the temperate oceans.



People Also Ask

White sand, no silt and shallow water are the main reasons for the pale blue/green colour of the carribean waters. The areas that have the cleanest, clearest waters are regions where the islands are surrounded by coral reefs, the white sand is coral debris and fragments of sea shell.

MORE DETAILS

Grand Anse Beach, Grenada One of the big attractions here is some of the clearest water in the Caribbean, the pristine sea floor sloping away gently at first and dropping off into navy blue depths. But even 90 feet from the shore, the visibility is exceptional and the sea teeming with life.

MORE DETAILS

Ocean water is clear due to the shallow sandy plateau of the Bahamas. Ocean depths are only 10 — 30m with white sand bottom for miles around the islands. Crystal clear.

MORE DETAILS

The Weddell Sea has been claimed by scientists to have the clearest waters of any ocean in the world. Described by a historian as “the most wretched and dismal region on earth”, due to the flash freezes that caught Shackleton's ship, its clarity is only belied by the sheer depth of the ocean below.

MORE DETAILS

Because the tropics have warm surface water, even in the winter, the thermocline never goes away, and the nutrients stay trapped down below in the depths. So even with ample sunlight, phytoplankton growth is severly limited. In the tropics, predators like coral make good use of what little plankton there is.

MORE DETAILS

Aruba is a Caribbean Island located eighteen miles off the coast of Venezuela. The Island is extremely arid, with no natural fresh water source available.

MORE DETAILS

The vast majority of the Caribbean does not have a problem with clean drinking water, but on most islands you wouldn't want to drink it anyway because it's produced from desalinization plants and doesn't taste very good. So most people just drink bottled water, which I recommend.

MORE DETAILS

Atlantic deep water is thought to spill into the Caribbean and contribute to the general deep water of its sea.

MORE DETAILS

The Maldives, for example, is made up more than 1,000 islands spread over 90,000 square kilometers, making it 99% water.

MORE DETAILS

Based on the last report issued by NASA and U.S. Geological Survey, about 80% of the Maldivian islands will be underwater by 2050 and so they will become inhabitable because the sea level rises from one year to another.

MORE DETAILS

Avoid Drinking Tap Water
Amongst the various things about Maldives that you should know, this one is most important. Water undergoes a different process in the Maldives to rid itself of all the harmful bacteria and germs. This process is known as reverse osmosis desalination.

MORE DETAILS