Yes, it's true, Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world....an interesting fact but one that warrants a bit of an introductory overview to truly appreciate the depth (pardon the pun!) of Fundy's vast tidal experience. So, as my first blog post on novascotia.com let me toss a few cool Bay of Fundy terms & trivia out into the blogosphere.1) 100 billion tonnes - the amount of sea water that passes through Bay of Fundy on a single tide cycle. If you're trying to get your head around exactly how much water that is, it may or may not help to know that it's the equivalent of the combined daily flow of all the world's freshwater rivers. That's A LOT of water so you can imagine Fundy's ebb and flow creates some very interesting effects along our coasts.
2) 6 hours, 13 minutes - the time it takes the Bay of Fundy tides to go from high to low (and vice versa). So within 24 hrs you can see at least one high and one low during daylight hours. For example, if the tide is high today at 8 am, it will be low this evening at 2:13 pm, then high again at 8:26 pm. Confused? Don't worry, each Bay of Fundy town posts its tide times on line.
3) 16.4 metres (or 53.6 feet) - the official vertical tidal measurement that gave Bay of Fundy its 'highest tides in the world' status. That is the figure for the difference in tide height from low tide to high tide in the same spot - think of dropping an anchor from a boat straight down to what was about 6 hrs earlier exposed ocean floor. This award-winning measurement was taken at Burntcoat Head - in the Minas Basin part of Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.
Luckily you don't have to be scuba diving over the ocean floor to appreciate the tide height: there are lots of tidal harbours, like the Parrsboro harbour pictured here, where the vertical drop can be seen wharf-side every day.
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