August 30, 2019 – Bay of Fundy, NB
When we arrived at the Bay of Fundy, I was interested to know what causes the tides here to be so extreme…..for most places in the world, the tide variance is only about 3 feet. I learned that it mainly has to do with resonance. The Bay of Fundy is just the right shape, and the right location, for a massive tidal change. I found a short article that explains it a lot better than I can. At the Bay of Fundy,
“the most important effect is resonance – the tides are high in the Bay of Fundy because the size of the bay is just right to match the natural gravitational pushing cycle of the Moon that causes the tides.
Imagine you are pushing someone on a swing. The energy of the person on the swing is much more than you give them in any one push, but if you provide the push at just the right time, you keep building up the resonant response. In our case the swing is the flow of water in and out of the bay, and the push is provided by ocean tides caused in turn by the gravitational influence of the Moon…… The Bay of Fundy is just the right length, about 270 km, for a resonance to exist, and we have a high tidal range response (like if you push the swing at just the right time, the person on the swing goes high). If the Bay of Fundy was a bit shorter, or a bit longer, the response would be less.”.
It’s hard to imagine the pure volume of the water flow. Two times a day, over 100 billion tons of seawater rushes into and out of the Bay of Fundy…..that’s more water flow than all of the world’s freshwater rivers combined. The volume of water is so big that is used to generate power. The nearby Annapolis Royal Power station is the only place in North America, and one of the few in the world, that produces power from tidal flow. The tide is also big enough to produce a “tidal bore” (basically, a leading edge wave) in several of the connected bays and rivers. When the tide is coming in, it “bores” its way upstream against the normal flow of the river. The tidal bore on the local Petticodiac River in Moncton is about 2 ft. high. On a good day, tidal bores wave can be surfed for miles. In fact, there are outfitters in the area that will provide the equipment an d take you to a place to do just that! Someone actually rode a local tidal bore for 18 miles! There are also rapids created by the incoming and outgoing tides but they are hard to find unless you’e a local. The waves in the rapids are 10-12 ft high.
Unfortunately, another characteristic of the tidal change is the very muddy water that gets stirred up as the massive amount of water rushes in and out over river and stream bottoms that have orange silty sandy soil. We could see that a lot of the rivers connected to the ocean were very muddy. We both agreed we didn’t want to wet with muddy water riding the Fundy tide or going in the rapids. One entrance fee will get us into the Hopewell Rocks Park for 2 days……so we decided to explore the surrounding area a little and stay around the campground today. We drove around the area, and took Frisco on a couple short hikes right here at the campground. It’s a fairly large piece of land and there is a trail all the way to the river. Because of the tidal surge inland into the rivers, streams, creeks, low laying field areas, etc., the landscape changes that occur with the tide are incredible……you can walk through large grassy fields in the morning that were totally underwater 4-5 hours later.
A bird house selling bird houses…..
This is the river behind the campground at low tide, followed by a picture during high tide.
A couple more examples showing how much the tide rose at a couple spots behind the campground
When we returned to our campsite later this afternoon, we sat outside with an adult beverage and played a dice game called Farkle.
Frisco is, as usual, is having a blast on our trip! She’s getting plenty of exercise! (thanks to Nancy for going the extra miles with her…..). It seems Frisco never gets tired of running around while we hike. She has to be covering at least twice as much ground as we do! And she continues to make friends with everybody…..usually before we do!
We’ll head over to the Hopewell Rocks Park again tomorrow .
All for today….