Shocking photos of a popular beach in the Mexican state of Oaxaca
sinking into the Ocean have been doing the rounds on social media,
leaving people scratching their heads in disbelief. It turns out the
sinking is being caused by a phenomenon known as “mar de fondo”, or
“swell”.
Swells rarely occur at popular seaside destination, which only makes
the repeated sinking of the beach at Puerto Escondito, in Oaxaca, that
much more peculiar. Swells, also known as surface gravity waves, are
created by storms thousands of miles away from the beaches on which they
break, and are not influenced by local winds. They cause a rise in sea
level, but are different than high tide, eating away at the sand they
it, and causing large stretches of beach to simply sink into the ocean.
This is what happened at Puerto Escondito last week, but the really
strange part is that the exact same thing occurred in the same place, in
May of last year.
Swells occur all over the world, but they are particularly strong on
the coast of Mexico, as the strong winds that blow between Australia and
the American continent push the waves to travel distances of more than
10,000 kilometers, without any obstacle, until they reach the beaches of
Oaxaca and Guerrero. However, with the exception of Puerto Escondito, they do not affect popular seaside destination.
Infobae
reports that swells can seem deceivingly harmless, as waves are not
particularly high, so they are indistinguishable from regular ones, due
to their considerable wavelength, they produce an increase in sea level
and cause serious erosion of sand strips, as you can see in these
photos.
