On my way to Heligoland the other day I noticed a phenomenon that I found really intriguing and that I should probably be able to explain. I first saw it on the screen of the boat’s web cams when we were about to leave the port of Hamburg. Unfortunately I could, at that point, only take a photo of the screen (but see how I excited I was to actually take a photo of the screen? ;-)).

Can you spot what I mean? Yes, that foam stripe running pretty much parallel to the pier! The place where it bends is right in front of our boat, which you see the railing off as that white stuff at the bottom of the screen).

But then, on Heligoland, I saw it again and became even more intrigued. Right in front of the place I stayed at, you could see it looking down the coast to your left…

…and to your right!

Here we can also see the stripe bending at some point, but here again the bend coincides with a change in the coast line. Similarly to what we saw in the port of Hamburg above, the stripe stays at more or less the same distance from the coast, so it is parallel while the coast is straight, and bends out when there are obstacles (like the catamaran above or the rocks below).

So how do we interpret the whole thing? I am not quite sure. I seem to have a very vague recollection that it should have something to do with half a wave length of the dominant wave, and foam collecting in a node point. And that makes sense intuitively. Except that I have several (ha! understatement of the month) minutes of video footage of the above, and I cannot for the life of me spot anything that would explain the stripe. If it is a node point, it is a very well-disguised one and I am surprised the foam can find it!

But there must be something different about that location than about all the other places closer to or further away from the coast. Any ideas, anyone?