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Locals Discover What’s Causing Mysterious Ocean Bubbles

Residents became enthralled by what could be causing the rolling patch of turbulence.

A seaside community has been enthralled by a mysterious patch of Jacuzzi-like bubbles off their stretch of coast. Residents of Hermosa Beach in the L.A. area, California, have stood in the rain and speculated wildly about what could be causing it, the Los Angeles Times reports. “Definitely a submersible under there,” one person guessed on Facebook. A bait ball, a whale, an alien, and a gas release were all among the prospects touted by locals cited by the Times. All were wrong. People only began to get to the bottom of the bubbly mystery when a boat appeared next to it. When the boat arrived, Mark Zurales paddled out to it and spoke to those on board. He told the Times on Tuesday, “I was on the case, I had to go down there and see it.” When he reached the men on the boat, they told him they were laying fiber-optic cables. One of the contractors, Rick Devinney of Drake Traffic Control Services, told the newspaper that it is a “transpacific fiber optic cable runs under the Pacific Ocean from California to Asia.” “They’re blowing air out to make sure that the conduit is clear,” he said. “They’re making sure that everything is clear to add more cable.”

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