Turns out there’s a dark story about why the island’s beaches are so pretty.
Whether you’re pulling up Google images of Bermuda’s pink-sand beaches for instant relaxation or vow to book a flight to the island (seriously, sinking your toes into this sugar-fine sand is dreamy!) there’s no doubt about it: these beaches are beautiful. Few other places in the world flaunt pink-sand beaches.
To be clear, this is not the Barbie-pink or petal-pink. It’s more like a mauve-y hue. But the differently colored sand is still something to experience and photograph.
Determined to crack the code about the science behind this phenomenon, we spoke to Dr. Amy Maas, a biological oceanographer who has lived in Bermuda for eight years. She works at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.
“Within our lifetimes, they’ve always been pink beaches,” says Maas. And the sand is unlike any you’ve ever seen: both in appearance and in texture.
“It’s stickier,” says Maas. “Because it’s not rocky. Whereas a lot of the beaches on the East coast or West coast, they’re made up of broken-down rock, like terrestrial rock, which gives it that different feel.”
Where Are the Best Pink-Sand Beaches in Bermuda?
Let’s start with orientation. Say you’re only in Bermuda for a few nights and in addition to sampling Rum Swizzles (Bermuda’s national cocktail: rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, bitters, and grenadine) you desperately want to check out this pink-beach phenomenon for yourself. Where do you go?
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According to Maas, if you only have time for one or two beaches, hit up the island’s South Shore. More specifically, Warwick Long Bay, Marley Beach, and Horeshoe Bay Cove. Just like the level of sunlight affects how blue an ocean’s water appears, how much light hits the sand demonstrates a different shade of pink.
But these are also consistent spots for pink sand. And it’s all because of a certain kind of single-celled animal that prefers the South Shore’s deeper waters.
Why Are Bermuda’s Beaches Pink?
The most concise explanation is that when single-celled organisms with red-colored shells–foraminifera, often called foram for short–that reside in the ocean die, they’re combined with the sand before washing up on the shoreline as pink. Their redness mixed with neutral hues in the sand—born out of quartz—is what makes the sand pink.
“Some of them live in the plankton and float around all their lives,” says Maas. “These guys are benthic [living on the bottom of the water]. They like to attach to things.”
Maas compares foram to coral. “It’s an animal that’s creating a rock [which] then is protecting other animals [as a reef] against wave action and storm action,” she says. “But unlike the corals, they’re single cells. When we think about other things that make shells, like clams or oysters or whatever, they build something called calcium carbonate, which is really hard. It’s what we see shells made out of. These guys [foram] add a little bit of magnesium. The thing that makes them so uniquely that color is [the] chemicals from the water they put into that shell.”
Those chemicals–magnesium and calcium carbonate–produce the shade of light ruby pink. Foram live in other bodies of water throughout the world, but their reaction in those waters differs.
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There are fewer pink-sand beaches on the north side of Bermuda, near St. George’s—for a very specific reason that, again, has to do with science.
“The north side of the island is the inside of a volcano and it’s shallow reef,” explains Maas. “The water has to come through more so that’s a slightly different community. We tend to have less [foram] there.”
It’s illegal to take pink sand home from Bermuda that you’ve captured on the beach. However, many souvenir shops and craft markets sell tiny glass capsules of the pretty pink sand. Several jewelry artists like Alexandra Mosher and Jennifer Rodrigues also derive inspiration from the pink sand, transforming it into jewelry you can buy online.
“This whole island relies so much on those reefs that then become our sand that then become the attraction that bring people to it,” says Maas.” It’s intrinsically beautiful.”
This is so awsome....