• A travel agency analyzed data to name the happiest beaches in the world.
• Coming in at the top within the U.S. is Oregon’s Cannon Beach.

If you’ve found you smile more and are generally more relaxed when at the beach, you’re not alone. There’s a scientific reason we’re happier by the ocean—or any body of water, for that matter. In his 2014 book “Blue Mind,” the late Dr. Wallace J. Nichols discussed how being in or around water lowers anxiety and increases a sense of calmness. There have since been several more studies to reinforce his findings, including one on the psychological and physiological benefits of watching water.

But CV Villas, a London-based travel agency, is taking it one step further by determining which body of water, specifically, makes people the happiest. By using AWS Facial Recognition software, the company analyzed thousands of Instagram photos tagged at more than 100 beaches around the world to find the oceanfront destinations that “elicit the most smiles.”

While the top spots were all locations in Europe—Spain’s Sitges Beach took the highest honor—Cannon Beach in the Pacific Northwest came out as the No. 1 “happiest” beach in the United States.

If you’ve ever been to the Oregon coast, you might not be all that surprised. Cannon Beach is stunning. Most notably, it’s home to the famous Haystack Rock, a 235-foot-tall basalt sea stack where a colony of tufted puffins lay their eggs and raise their young each year. The beach also has incredible tide pools, access to scenic hikes, and a charming seaside town—complete with art galleries, candy shops, and local restaurants and microbreweries.

Although CV Villas didn’t provide any other specifics regarding how the facial recognition technology was used, it did share that the technology was able to “gauge happiness levels” through “positive facial expressions” and score each photo out of 100, with 100 representing the “highest happiness.” The individual scores were then used to calculate an average score for each location; Cannon Beach received an 89.11.

Two other North American beaches landed in the top 25 destinations: Mexico’s Playa Delfines and Florida’s Siesta Key Beach, the latter of which was recently named the best beach in the U.S.