5 Colorful Things You Didn't Know About Tropical Oceans!

Part 2 of our Tropic Collection is now live in the app, and this time it’s all about tropical waters! And again, we have some colorful facts for you to ponder while you’re coloring!

1. We’ve all seen the incredible turquoise color of the Caribbean - at least in photos! But what makes the water that beautiful color? It’s actually because tropical waters are much shallower than oceans! Deep water absorbs more sunlight, so it looks darker; shallower seas absorb less sunlight, and that’s what creates that beautiful shade of blue!
2. We’re used to sand being - well, sand-colored - but that’s not always the case! Some tropical beaches have incredible BLACK sand! Black sand is the result of volcanic activity - volcanoes release lava, which turns into rocks like basalt, and those rocks are ground down by waves until you have a beach full of gorgeous black sand!
3. Even rarer than black sand beaches are beaches with GREEN sand - there are only four in the world! Again, it has to do with volcanoes. Green sand is made up of olivine crystals, which are formed by volcanic activity. The crystals stay on the beach instead of getting swept away because they’re quite heavy. Papakōlea beach in Hawaii is the most famous green sand beach!
4. Everybody knows tropical fish are super colorful - but why? Scientists aren’t sure, but it seems that some fish that look colorful to us might not look colorful to other fish! Different species of fish can see very different combinations of colors, so some fish that stand out to us as very colorful are actually almost invisible to the other fish that might want to eat them!
5. Apparently a ton of fish can see UV! That means that some colorful fish are actually even MORE colorful than the human eye can see! They have UV patterns on them that are invisible to humans - one of these fish UV colors scientists have discovered is “UV yellow”, a color that is hard for us to even imagine. What makes these UV colors extra cool is that some fish can send signals to each other with flashes of UV light and color that the other fish can see and understand. A little like using invisible ink to send messages to your friends, but a lot more colorful!

So now you have a bit of an idea of how colorful tropical waters can be! We hope you put that to good use in coloring our Collection!

Happy Coloring!