There is absolutely no doubt being at the beach makes almost everyone way happier. The sights, the smells, and the sounds of the waves will always make someone relax especially if they are coming from another place where oceans and bodies of water are a rare sight. The beach is a place where many people barely touch their phones, especially kids on a family vacation because all they want to do is swim in the ocean and ride the jet skis of course!
But it does take a brain scientist, or maybe a few, to help us understand why being near the water brings us such deep contentment. There’s been precious little research into this question and not much talk among experts. Some studies have nibbled around the edges: The color blue has been shown to produce feelings of security and relaxation, and researchers have discovered that blood pressure and stress levels drop when people watch fish swimming in small aquariums. But interest in the bigger question—the connection between the ocean and the human psyche—is now picking up, thanks in large part to the efforts of a 45-year-old turtle biologist named Wallace J. Nichols.
Nichols works as a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and is a devoted conservationist who’s known for talking openly about his passions rather than burying them under the dry rhetoric of science. As a child, he says, “I fell in love with the ocean,” both by visiting it with his family and then by “revisiting it in my imagination, sometimes with the help of Jacques Cousteau.” He wanted nothing more than to be on the water all day, and that fierce attachment set his career path in motion. As a student at Indiana’s DePauw University, he says, “I explored just about every waterway in the state. I snorkeled in ponds that I don’t think anybody has snorkeled in before or after.”
Being at the beach can spark so many new interests and passions that you didn’t even know you had! Overall the beach is a place that is great to ease your mind and relax the body. Not to mention the food is amazing !
