Drone Photos Show Sea Around Portsmouth Looking Like A Tropical Paradise

There's a video too, which is very satisfying to watch.

The photographs were taken by a drone flying over Portsmouth and show an azure blue sea that could be lifted straight from a postcard from a tropical paradise.

Instead, it's the Solent.

The usually murky waters glow in bright turquoise, and some people believe that this change is because the pollution levels have fallen in recent times without humans or industry.

Now, this might not be the case, but if it is, at least something positive is coming out of all of this.

It could just be that the waters are stiller at the minute, usually on a weekend with sunshine, such as the Easter weekend and last weekend, the Solent would be filled with leisure craft and tourists lapping up the sunshine and enjoying themselves by the coast.

Because this hasn't happened, the waters have been left undisturbed, which could explain why the water looks cleaner and more colourful than usual.

Mike Woods, who took the pictures using drones from his family business, Solent Sky Services, said: "There has been a lot of talk about the colour of the water in the area recently and I think the perception is, nature is thriving."

He added: "It's beautiful to see it and it looks like you are in a different country down there, it really does. It's phenomenal.

"We've never, ever seen the water look this clear before, it's lovely."

Obviously, it would be massively over-optimistic to assume that all the problems facing our environments have been wiped out by a few weeks of human inactivity, but it still looks lovely, doesn't it?

So, here's some science that could help shed some light - that pun will become more relevant in a second - on what's actually going on.

Basically, the colour of the sea is influenced largely by the amount of red and blue light that comes from the sun.

Whilst it absorbs the vast majority of the red light, the blue light colours it and changes hue based upon how many particles there are in the water.

The more particles, the darker and murkier the water will look.

That means that if there's more particles around, often from car pollution, or any other human activity, we won't see the beaches looking like the sandy stretches of the Seychelles very often.

But, if we aren't there to create the pollution, and then leisure traffic on the seas isn't churning more pollution up and out, the seas return to tranquillity.

However, there are no tourists there to see it, so it's something of a catch-22 situation really.

Either way, enjoy the drone shots.