Do waves move water from place to place?

Dateline article| David Murphy|

No. A wave only transports energy, not actual water. You've gotten a sense of this if you've ever watched a seagull sitting on the ocean surface. The bird bobs up and down as a wave passes, but it's position in the water remains pretty much the same. That's because energy is passing beneath the gull and through the water, but the water itself is not changing position much. Water disturbed by a wave makes a short orbit, pitching forward and backward, up and down, but ends-up in roughly the same place it started.

---David Murphy

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