A small tornado at sea, that's what is a waterspout. The massive column of the waterspout is actually composed of water droplets that are spinning at very high speed; as fast as 200 km/sec.
The ones in the Florida Keys are pretty well documented, photographed and are a regular in occurrence. This was on the Mediterranean sea, on 24th October 2009, about 1 Mile from my ship, around 7 AM in the morning. It was hard to spot the nearly transparent water column, but we managed to track it with the disturbance it created on the water surface.
The water in a waterspout is mostly confined to its lower portion, and may be either salt spray drawn up by the sea surface, or freshwater resulting from condensation due to the lowered pressure in the center of the vortex creating the spout. The air in waterspouts may rotate clockwise or counterclockwise,depending on the manner of formation. They are found
most frequently in tropical regions and sometimes in higher latitudes too.
Photo details: Lens: 75mm , f/4.5 , 1/320 sec, ISO- 400, Manual Focus (Since the contrast is poor, the camera was unable to autofocus on the waterspout and was seeking the clouds in the background)
Labels: natural phenomenon