Ocean Motion

In the deeper water, you bob up and down with the waves. When you’re up, you’re riding the crest of a wave. When you’re down, you’re in the trough (TROF) of the wave.

The tallest recorded wave was 1,720 feet high—as tall as 172 basketball hoops stacked on top of each other.

When the wave’s crest moves forward, water in front of it rises in a circular movement. The water behind the crest begins to fall. That water keeps falling, creating the trough. This happens again and again as the energy in the wave moves forward, but the water itself stays put.

But when the energy in a wave is more powerful than the force of the water sticking together, the wave breaks and rolls forward. Those are the waves that crash onto the shore.

The Bible tells us that on the third day of creation week God gathered the earth’s water into an ocean. Jesus, the Son of God, was with God in the beginning, and “all things were made through him” (John 1:3). When Jesus calmed the storm in Matthew 8:23–27, he showed his power over what he has made—including the ocean and its waves!

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