Of great importance in the life of water bodies is light and its penetration. The life of plants and organisms depends on this: the further the light goes into the water column, the deeper the plants will grow. But when studying the question of the penetration of light, many "variables" must be taken into account.
Factors Affecting Light Penetration
Light penetrates into the water column to a depth, while lighting depends on various external factors. For example, at sunset, less light passes under the layers of water than at noon, and in the north it penetrates worse than in the south, etc.
Water in reservoirs is never clean, it necessarily contains different substances: soil, dust, the remains of decaying organisms, silt, small animals and vegetation, air bubbles, gas. And with the addition of factors such as wind, convection flows, atmospheric phenomena, the turbidity of the water increases.
Especially large reservoirs this comes from the rivers flowing into them. All these particles absorb or weaken the light. Rays that encounter such obstacles in their paths change and can scatter around. It depends on this whether light penetrates into the water column to a depth or not.
The most transparent water was recorded in the Sargasso Sea, where it reached sixty-six meters, and in the Sea of Azov - no more than twelve centimeters.
Sunshine
It consists of visible and invisible spectra, infrared and ultraviolet belong to the latter. Water in the sea absorbs light rays in different ways . So at a depth of half a meter only infrared radiation is absorbed, so the light at this depth is white.
If you dive for five meters, then other shades are added to the light: blue and green. The deeper the level, the more red and yellow are absorbed, and blue and green colors remain. If you go down to a depth of fifty meters, the sea will acquire a blue color.
One American scientist conducted a study without the use of various devices to check: light penetrates into the water column to a depth or not. He was immersed in a special apparatus for 900 meters in the Sargasso Sea area. So at the level of 50 meters he saw water in green, 60 in blue-green, 180 in pure blue, 300 m in black and blue, 580 - light was barely visible, and the most necessary for aquatic organisms red and yellow rays disappeared very first.
Light for water vegetation
With the help of different instruments, rays can also be recorded in very deep places, but this is not enough for vegetation, photosynthesis needs more red light, hence the sparse vegetation at a depth of two hundred meters, even a transparent sea. In the Baltic Sea, the bottom flora extends no less than twenty meters, and in the Mediterranean - up to one hundred and sixty.
An interesting fact is that the vegetation of the seas grows more evenly horizontally than on the earth - this indicates the same distribution of sunlight and minerals necessary for them.
Light penetrates into the water column to a depth or not affects also the color of the animal world and plants. If in the upper layers the living creatures are colored in brown and red shades, then at the depths black and colorless animals predominate.
Although sunlight does not penetrate the depths of the ocean to the bottom, the depth is not entirely black without it. Dots of light come across that darkness - these are luminous fish that use their skill to attract prey. At such a depth, not the sun or small grains of its light are a resource for existence: sulfur and oxygen, which are released from thermal solutions, are a source of life.
The penetration of light into water and ice
From the foregoing, it is clear that different particles trap light and its penetration into water, and even more so snow and ice in the winter season. So an ice layer of 50 centimeters will let in less than 10 percent of the light, and if it is also covered with snow, penetration will be only 1 percent.
To what depth does light penetrate into the thickness of Lake Baikal
When studying the question of the depth of light penetration in Lake Baikal, in 2012, scientists accidentally established the fact that the "glow" of water in this lake, but this was not given to human eyes, this is only confirmed by special devices.
It turns out that the water of this lake produces light anywhere, but at a depth its saturation decreases. Not far from the island called Olkhon, where the station is located, the fact of a minimum glow was established - one hundred photons. This phenomenon is associated with the purity of water, and its intensity - with the time of year.
From the middle of winter, the life of the “glow” seems to freeze, and then reborn. At the time when the research was conducted, the beginning of the revival fell on the sacrament of Baptism. The fact of the glow of water in this place is not well understood, it has yet to be scientists.
Previously, when investigating the question of how deep sunlight penetrates the thickness of the water in this lake, a figure of 100 meters was put forward, but space research showed that the bottom can be seen at a depth of 500 meters. Hence it is assumed that the rays can penetrate up to 1000 meters. And this question today is subject to extensive research.
Deep-waterers claim that, having descended to 800 meters, you can still see daylight, and its disappearance completely when registering with a photographic plate occurs at 1500 meters.