Waves are always observed in the ocean. Even if the ocean is calm, you can still see some being formed near the horizon. An ocean is never still, there is always some form of motion in the water or in other words waves are never absent.
A curious question comes to our mind, What actually causes the ocean to have waves? Well, waves are formed by the passage of energy in the water causing it to move in circular motion. One thing to be noted here is that water does not travel with waves. They just transmit energy and never transport water from one place to another. They can actually travel across the basin if left unobstructed as they are in essence just energy.
They are generally formed by the wind. What happens is when the wind is blowing over the surface of the sea, then the surface of the waterbody exerts the gravitational force on the bottom layer of the wind. This leads to a pull effect on the layer above it ultimately reaching the topmost layer.
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So, what happens is that every layer of the wind has variable gravitational energy acting upon it because of the variation of speed in the wind itself. This leads to tumbling of the topmost layer, hence resulting in a circular motion. Therefore a wave is formed due to the downward pressure at the front and upward pressure at the rear.
