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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.
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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.
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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.
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