The light does not fall evenly

 The light does not fall evenly.

It separates, stretches, and descends in narrow columns across the surface of the sea.

This effect occurs when sunlight passes through breaks in a dense cloud layer and interacts with suspended water droplets, ice crystals, and fine atmospheric particles. As the light travels downward, it is scattered and partially diffracted, causing faint spectral separation that gives the beams subtle color variation rather than pure white.

These vertical rays are known as crepuscular rays.
They are not beams originating from a single point in the sky, but parallel paths of light shaped by perspective, cloud geometry, and distance. The darker regions between them are simply areas where clouds block the light entirely.

The ocean surface reflects this structure precisely.
Small waves break the reflection into fragments, while the overall alignment remains visible due to the low angle of the Sun and the calmness of the water beyond the foreground.