It looked like the stuff of a barista's nightmare–a giant frothy wave swallowing the shore, coating people and anything else in its path with bizarre, bubbly sea foam.
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Like a page from a science fiction novel, pictures document the day in August when the shoreline in Australia's New South Wales was transformed into the "Cappuccino Coast."
Teens on surfboards were waiting for a good wave that day when the bubbles rolled in. The froth, light and fluffy, took over the beach and the neighboring surf club. For as far as the eye could see, the Pacific Ocean was nothing but foam.
Scientists later said the froth extended out 30 miles from the coastline.
They believe it likely began as a regular wave, cresting with foam on its surface. The motion of the water caused the bubbles to mass together, transforming into a thick froth.
"It's the same effect you get when you whip up a milkshake in a blender," one marine scientist told the U.K. Daily Mail. "The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes."
Tom Woods, a 12-year-old boy who had hoped to catch a wave that day, said he and his friends were fascinated.
"Me and my mates just spent the afternoon leaping about in that stuff," he told the Daily Mail. "It was quite cool to touch... It was like clouds of air–you could hardly feel it."
Climatologists in Australia said the strange foam, the likes of which hadn't been seen in three decades, was likely caused by storms far out at sea.
The low pressure storm, they said, churned up sea salt, dead fish, seaweed and other ocean debris until the sea was whipped into a froth no cappuccino machine could beat.
Douglas Hilderbrand, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Silver Spring, Maryland, said the low pressure system was likely caused when a warm tropical air mass collided with a cold polar air mass, creating an intense storm with high winds.
"The strong winds off the coast of eastern Australia combined with the unique seawater composition to create tremendous amounts of sea foam," he said.
