Line #22 Main/SeeWater


1	In RealLife, it's very difficult to see underwater without wearing a facemask or goggles. Even things that are less than a foot away from your face come across as vague, indistinct blurs. This is because air and water have different refractive indices, and our eyes have adapted to focusing the light from the outside air through the (mostly watery) humors inside the eye onto the retina. When we replace air with water, the eye cannot physically adapt to different refraction angles and starts focusing the light far ''behind'' the retina, making all images blurry, at best. Read more about it [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_vision here]].
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3	On top of that, depending on what's in the water around your head, opening your eyes can be anything from irritating to excruciating, and in the case of extremely contaminated water, may result in a nasty infection that could cause you to [[EyeScream lose eyesight]]. Even clean water has to have ''something'' on the bottom (unless you happen to be inside an artificial body of water, like a container or swimming pool), and if you're near the bottom, every movement will kick up clouds of sand, silt or dust, further reducing your visibility if you do it enough.
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5	This is not the case in TV Land, however, where characters have the same crystal-clear visibility underwater as a camera lens, and can routinely read individual letters from long distances with their bare eyes.
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7	A subtrope of WaterIsAir.
8	----
9	!!Examples:
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11	[[foldercontrol]]
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13	[[folder:Comic Books]]
14	* British comic character Fishboy (appearing in the weekly anthology ''Buster'') was an amphibious WildChild who also didn't need goggles underwater.
15	[[/folder]]
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17	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
18	* In ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', Milo Thatch reads ancient Atlantean underwater inscriptions with glasses on. Note that reading them with his glasses ''off'' could actually be possible--extremely shortsighted people can see more or less normal underwater, due to their eye's skewed refraction.
19	[[/folder]]
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21	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
22	* Much of ''Film/AvatarTheWayOfWater'' takes place underwater in tropical seas, so there is some justification for visibility staying quite high.
23	* ''Film/{{Hellboy\|2004}}'': Inverted with Abe Sapien: he requires goggles (or in the [[Film/HellboyIITheGoldenArmy second film]], contact lenses) to put ''water'' around his eyes to see clearly through ''air''.
24	* Galen in ''Film/{{Dragonslayer}}'' is able to determine [[spoiler:Valerian's [[SamusIsAGirl real sex]] underwater, in a fairly murky pond, from about 5 feet away.]]
25	* At the end of ''Film/{{Mindhunters}}'', the heroine and killer wind up in an underwater gunfight, in which they can clearly see one another's actions from a few yards apart. The heroine even ''mouths insults'' at her opponent, who gives her dirty looks in response.
26	* Will in ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest'' has no problem opening his eye underwater and seeing the attacking Kraken.
27	* ''Film/{{Poseidon}}'': The characters navigate a convoluted passage that's flooded with salt water, very obviously using flashlights to look where they're going and keep track of one another.
28	* ''Film/TheShallows'' is about a young surfer's fight for survival against an inexplicably homicidal ThreateningShark. The final confrontation starts with her trapped on a signal buoy that's anchored at the sea floor about 15 meters below her (it's called ''The Shallows'' for a reason), and when the shark's berserk attacks eventually throw her off the buoy, she's immediately able to spot said anchor through the churning water, ''in the darkness of the breaking dawn''.
29	[[/folder]]
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31	[[folder:Literature]]
32	* The classic adventure novel ''Literature/TheCoralIsland'' by R.M. Ballantyne describes the characters swimming underwater and looking around at the marine life, which they can see clearly.
33	* In ''Literature/WarriorCats'', [[spoiler:Flametail]] is able to see clearly underwater as he drowns.
34	[[/folder]]
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36	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
37	* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': Galadriel never has sight problems whenever she emerges under the salty water of the Sundering Seas. She spends several seconds to look at the SeaSerpent attacking the raft she just met.
38	* In ''Series/{{Lost}}'', nobody ever has problems seeing things underwater, from [[spoiler:Kate and Sawyer finding the suitcase full of guns]] in Season 1, to [[spoiler:Nikki and Paolo finding their bag of diamonds in the same pond]] in Season 3, to [[spoiler:following Richard Alpert underwater to the bomb]] in Season 5.
39	[[/folder]]
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41	[[folder:Video Games]]
42	* If a game features water, it's more likely to use this trope than not, so aversions:
43	** ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' has water that you can only see a few feet out from you in while swimming, but that's only a fog that represents mud, pollution and other particles in the water. The underwater view is otherwise completely clear. However, Episode Two subverts this trope by adding a blur effect while underwater. And of course, see ''Half-Life'''s entry [[HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic on this page]] for the debate about how much of a JustifiedTrope this might or might not be.
44	** In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'', your view is obscured underwater even though Samus already has a face mask. The powerup that lets you move freely in water also upgrades your visor so you can ''see'' freely, as well.
45	** In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', it's pretty dark underwater, which makes it harder to fight back if you're suddenly attacked by [[PiranhaProblem slaughterfish]] or [[FishPeople dreughs]]. Fortunately, Light and Night Eye spells/potions/enchantments work underwater too. There's also a bug where if you swim at exactly the right height, the water looks like it's disappeared, and you can see forever.
46	* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', in addition to the general blue overlay and particles floating around, water gets darker the deeper down you go, making it impossible to see more than a few blocks down. There are ways to make it easier to see under water; the Respiration enchantment for headgear partially removes the blue overlay and the Night Vision potion helps with the darkness. Respiration III plus a Night Vision potion allows the player to see just as well under water as on land. However, starting in Version 1.13, underwater vision improves the longer the player is underwater, even without enchantments or potions. The update also changed light to spread the same way as on land, compared to being three times dimmer underwater.
47	[[/folder]]
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49	[[folder:Webcomics]]
50	* [[http://stressedjenny.deviantart.com/art/Salt-water-stings-291844501 This]] ''Mias and Elle'' comic finds salt water in the eyes to not be very romantic.
51	* ''Webcomic/TheLittleTrashmaid'': Openly defied. Tidy tries to get Spencer to help her with her merman friend's predicament and takes him underwater to show him, but Spencer is unable to see and believes that he saw a sea dragon.
52	[[/folder]]
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54	[[folder:Real Life]]
55	* Many semi-aquatic animals have a transparent second eyelid that corrects for refraction and allows them to see clearly underwater.
56	* The four-eyed fish, which spends its life at the surface of ponds and streams, has eyeballs with double pupils: an upper one for seeing in air, and a lower one for seeing clearly in water.
57	* People with nearsighted vision can see better underwater than people with 20/20 vision, due to the way the water magnifies and refracts light.
58	* [[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/we-are-what-we-eat-diving-for-dinner-with-the-sea-gypsies These people]] can not only hold their breath a very long time, but they are either adapted or have learned from childhood to compensate for the difference in refraction to see very well underwater. They spend a lot of time diving!
59	* Loch Ness is an aversion, which makes the Loch Ness Monster both more ''and less'' plausible. The water of the loch is ''extremely'' dark, which makes exploration difficult and allows people to imagine all sorts of things living undiscovered in its depths. On the other hand, the darkness of the water results in less vegetation, which results in fewer fish feeding on the vegetation, which results in fewer predatory fish feeding on ''them''. It's thus very unlikely that some kind of leftover dinosaur or something could have survived there.
60	[[/folder]]

Context Main / SeeWater