The Beach

My friends back home are bundled up in wool and fleece and I am standing on the beach in Puerto Rico, sand and sea water lapping between my toes that were just starting their winter-shoe internment. The afternoon sun shines down and warms my skin like a soft, cozy blanket. In the distance I can see clouds forming, warning of the afternoon rains that are a regulare feature of tropical islands. But until then, we are enjoying the beach.

The salty water is warmer than the Jersey shore has ever been and ever will be. Hundreds of yards from where I stand the water is a clear aquamarine, like the beaches seen in endless postcards. But near to where we are swimming the water seems to be undergoing an algae bloom, which gives the water a brown tinge. The algae seems innocuous enough -- I can see fishermen working the same cove where we are playing -- but I can't but think of what could be causing the bloom. Pollution? Runoff? Global woarming? If the greenhouse effect is real, the water in the Caribbean Sea could rise a few degrees, a seemingly harmless and possibly beneficial side effect. But scientists don't know for sure what that change would mean. It could increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and disrupt the flow of water along the Atlantic seaboard. Algae blooms like the one I see could become more frequent, choking other marine life. Even the coral reefs could be harmed. I know they are hiding, with all their glorious bumps and divets and exotically shaped creatures, miles offshore from where I'm standing, under the cover of ocean.

But these thoughts wander from my mind as I begin to contemplate the immediacy of the serenity and beauty before me. The algae is harmless, I conclude, and it can no longer keep me from running into the ocean to drench myself in the blissfully salty and warm water.