You're explaining to a youngster at the seashore why the water is cyan colored. The youngster points to the whitecaps of overturning waves and asks why they are white. What is your answer?

Could the white be scattered light of all colors, yielding white? Could it be related to why mist or fog or clouds are white?

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/atmos/blusky.html#c3

Thank You,very much

Well, if you look at the water around us, you'll notice that it appears cyan or bluish-green in color. The reason for this is mainly due to the way water interacts with sunlight.

You see, sunlight is made up of different colors, which we can see when it passes through a prism and creates a rainbow. When sunlight reaches the Earth's atmosphere, it contains all these colors, including blue and green.

Now, when sunlight reaches the ocean, some of the colors are absorbed by the water, while others are scattered or reflected back. The water molecules absorb more of the red, orange, and yellow wavelengths, which are on the warmer end of the color spectrum. This is why we perceive the ocean water as having a bluish or cyan color.

As for the whitecaps you pointed out, those are caused by waves breaking and churning up the water. When this happens, tiny air bubbles and particles of foam get trapped in the water, and they scatter the sunlight that enters the wave. This scattering of light by the foam and bubbles causes a lot more of the colors in the sunlight spectrum to be reflected back to our eyes, which creates the appearance of white.

So, in short, the water looks cyan because of the way sunlight interacts with it, and the whitecaps appear white because the foam and bubbles scatter a wider range of colors back to our eyes.