We are widely familiar with the reliefs on the earth’s surface such as mountain ranges or plains, but the truth is that these geological traces are not only visible. The ocean floor is also littered with amazing formations that challenge our understanding of the planet. One of them is the underwater waterfall of Mauritius that gives us a sublime view that seems to come out of an art painting.
On a small island to the east of Greater Africa, lies one of the most naturally amazing countries. With extraordinary conditions since its flora and fauna have evolved from isolation, it is rich in biodiversity like many other cases of exotic islands such as Socotra Island. But in addition to this, Mauritius is well known for having one of the most unusual geological phenomena in its marine territory, an apparent underwater waterfall that experts have had to analyze to decipher its behavior.
The underwater plateau in Mauritius
In the middle of the sea you can see an underwater plateau that gives the illusion that the sea is split in half. Unlike the continental plates that gradually lose depth in the sea, the plateaus do so suddenly. Thus on the beaches around the continents, one has to go several kilometers out to sea to finally face the ocean depth. Instead, the submarine plateaus go from practically a few meters deep, to kilometers towards the center of the Earth.
There are many plateaus in the oceanic bodies of the globe, but Mauritius’s is unique in the world, since it gives the illusion of behaving like a real waterfall on the earth’s surface. That is to say, despite the fact that it is underwater, it seems that the liquid runs down the walls of the plateau until it is lost in the depths. A true natural work of art that anyone will love.
However, it is well known that although there are ocean currents moving due to temperature differences, they are not especially visible to the human eye. Therefore, the illusion of water draining into the depth of the plateau is not due to the behavior of the water, since from our perspective we could only see the different shades of the sea that turn dark as less sunlight reaches them.
A beautiful optical illusion
But in the case of the oceanic plateau of Mauritius, not only is the change in hue observed, but you can almost see how the water constantly drains. Which leads experts to wonder, why does the Mauritian plateau give the illusion of behaving like a real waterfall? The answer is simpler than it seems and lies in the sand.
What happens there is nothing more than the effects of erosion, in which marine waters wear away coastal regions, crushing the solid material of the rocks, which end up reduced to grains of sand. The sand reaches the plateau covering its shallower parts and is then dragged into the depths of the sea. We could say that after all it is indeed an underwater waterfall, although not one especially made of water, but of rock ground into highly fine material. An amazing geological phenomenon to observe.
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