A toddler held by her father swims underwater during a swimming class for babies at Lane Cove pool February 16, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
Luxury buildings are reflected in front of houses at a lake dwelling also known as or palafitte or “Palafito” in Recife, Brazil, March 1, 2016. Zika has spread most rapidly in the urban squalor of Brazil's northeastern coastal cities like Recife. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
Christian pilgrims from Brazil embrace after they are baptized in the water of the Jordan River during a ceremony at the Yardenit baptismal site near the northern Israeli city of Tiberias October 15, 2014. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)
The Bajau people of Malaysia live their lives completely at sea, living in wooden huts and spending their days fishing. Sailing over crystal clear waters, the Bajau people of Malaysia live their lives almost entirely at sea. Photographer Ng Choo Kia joined the Bajau people on their pirogues, which are long narrow canoes made from single tree trunks, and documented their daily life in a series of pictures. (Photo by Ng Choo Kia/Hotspot Media/SIPA Press)
A man (2nd L) takes pictures as visitors run away from a wave caused by a tidal bore which surged past a barrier on the banks of Qiantang River, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province August 14, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)
Residents wade through flood waters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Beaumont Place, Houston, Texas on August 28, 2017. Houston was still largely paralyzed Monday, and there was no relief in sight from the storm that spun into Texas as a Category 4 hurricane, then parked itself over the Gulf Coast. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)
The sirens Charybdis and Scylla resided in the Sicilian Sea. Homer tells us that because Charybdis had stolen the oxen of Hercules, Zeus struck her with a thunderbolt and changed her into a whirlpool whose vortex swallowed up ships. In Charybdis the circular movement of water inside a transparent acrylic cylinder forms an air-core vortex in the centre. Steps wrap around the cylinder and allow spectators to view the vortex from above. The cylinder was manufactured in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)