SPACEPHOTOS

The faint, irregular-shaped line running east-west is a convergence of two currents in the Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and Africa. The blurred white line, offset where it crosses the current boundary, is a bilge-pumped ship wake that has been affected by the water movement along the boundary between water fronts. The resultant linear feature caused by the convergence of two water currents is called a suloy (a new oceanographic term). A suloy is an unusual condition of the sea in which the surface is covered by precipitous and irregular waves that form in lines at a convergence and in the curved boundaries of eddies. The term was coined by the Russians to describe such features in the White Sea. Few, if any, quantitative measurements have been made of a suloy, and there are no useful estimates of frequency and wave spectra or hypotheses of generation. There are fewer than a dozen published articles devoted to suloys, each of which is a description of a unique phenomenon.