Annapolis Royal is a beautiful small town on the Bay of Fundy – and a historically significant one for Canada as well. The town deserves it’s own post – but today I wanted to focus on highlighting the incredible tides you can see from it’s waterfront.
The Bay of Fundy divides the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and is known for having the highest tidal range in the world. Off the waterfront of Annapolis Royal I spent 2 beautiful days taking before and after photos of the tidal changes.
In this part of the Bay of Fundy the tide changes an average of 27 feet every 6 hours. Further up the bay it goes as high as a 55 foot difference. It is a truly remarkable phenomenon and I hope through these photos to show how incredible the difference is.
The Bay of Fundy is a finalist in the vote for 7 Natural Wonders of the world. You can read all about it, and vote here. The folks at Annapolis Royal are proud of their dramatic tides, and one of the things I hope to accomplish with these photos is to inspire more folks to vote for the bay of Fundy – it truly is a natural wonder. While you’re at it you can read about the other candidates – many of them are awe inspiring in their own right.
The folks at Annapolis have learned to work around their tides, tying their boats so they don’t tip over and ensuring a constant feed of rope that lengthens as the boat drops as the tide goes out.
To explain the effect I defer to wikipedia ;)
“ Oceanographers attribute it to tidal resonance resulting from a coincidence of timing: the time it takes a large wave to go from the mouth of the bay to the inner shore and back is practically the same as the time from one high tide to the next. During the 12.4 hour tidal period, 115 billion tonnes of water flow in and out of the bay.[6]“
While the tide was out Yvette and I couldn’t resist a few goofy shots as well;
For perspective, Yvette is exactly 6′ tall. You can see the high tide mark way above our heads. It takes only 6 hours to reach that mark from low tide – watching the speed at which it comes in is also incredible.
More about this beautiful town and the amazing Bay of Fundy coming soon!
Great photos! It’s a pretty amazing place, I saw the bay of Fundy when u was a kid. I love the last few shots with the boats… They give such great perspective on the grand scale of things!
(oops, ‘when *I* was a kid’…)
I have never seen anything like this before. Thank you so much for taking the time to capture this phenomenon.
Hi
Very nice pictures! Is there any chance, that you will permit us the right to use some of them? We are a nonprofit aquarium in Denmark who´s doing an interactive exhibition called “the sea in acton”. One of the stands is about the tidal forces and natyrally The Bay of Fundy is a hotspot we would like the danes to know about :-)! All the best – Lars H. W.
Hi Lars – please email me at hello@thebluebrick.ca :)