Thoughts

Simulating any body of water with particles, from a small steam to the south pacific, is an extremely taxing process for the hardware rendering it. Generally, especially in computer games, this type of simulation is handled by procedurally generated piece of geometry.

There is also the possibility so that the mesh size may vary as you move through the water, so deeper water has a larger mesh as it doesn't need to be as precise as the top of the water where the mesh will become finer, further saving on performance.

So there are a few ways I am going to test how an ocean simulation could be achieved, small scale tests with nParticle systems, Fluid Effects such as; fluid containers and a reactive geometry mesh.