JetStream Max: Bay of Fundy: The Highest Tides in the World (2024)

FAQs

Why does the Bay of Fundy have the highest tides in the world? ›

Fundy's tides are the highest in the world because of an unusual combination of resonance (or seiche) and the shape of the bay. Like water in any basin, the water in the Bay of Fundy has a natural rocking motion called a seiche. You could compare this to the movement of water in a bathtub.

Bay of Fundy Tides: The Highest Tides in the World!

There are two high tides and two low tides in the bay every day; over 100 billion tons of water flow in and out of the bay twice a day. It is very important for people living near the Bay of Fundy to know the tides if they want to fish from shore, go tidepooling, or go boating along the coast.

Not only is the Bay of Fundy famous for high tides, but its shoreline cliffs and beaches are home to the world's most complete fossil record of life 300 million years ago, making it part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site AND a UNESCO Global Geopark.

Tucked into a pocket between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy is famous for having dramatic differences between its high and low tides. In fact, the tides observed here are tied with Ungava Bay (located farther north) for the largest tides on Earth.

The term king tide is generally used to describe the highest tides of the year. Tides are caused by the gravitational forces of the moon and the sun.

The Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia is the classic example of this effect, and has the highest tides in the world – over 15 meters (Thurman, H.V., 1994). Narrow inlets and shallow water also tend to dissipate incoming tides.

THE HIGHEST TIDES

In 1975 The Guinness Book of World Records listed Burntcoat Head (57 km away) in the Bay of Fundy's Minas Basin as the site of the greatest average tide of 14.5 m (47.5 feet) with an extreme range of 16.3 m (53.6 feet).

Saint John, NB, is the only major city on the Bay of Fundy.

Large areas, such as Georges Bank, much of the Bay of Fundy, and the area off southwest Nova Scotia, are kept well mixed vertically by the strong tidal currents (with resulting cold surface waters and frequent fog), rather than developing the warm surface layer that occurs in less well-mixed waters in summer.

What location on Earth has the greatest daily tidal range? ›

Located in Canada, between the provinces of Nova Scotia and Brunswick, sits the Bay of Fundy, home to the world largest tidal variations.

Bay of fundy has the largest tidal range in the world because of its shape. It has a narrow and elongated passage which form a funnel shape. Bay of fundy has natural period of oscillation somewhere between 12 and 13 hours.

The highest tides in the world can be found in Canada's Bay of Fundy at Burntcoat Head in Nova Scotia.

Bathymetric map of the Bay of Fundy. Red-to-orange colours indicate shallow water and blue-to-violet colours denote deeper water. Much of the bay is less than 100 m deep but the southwest part of the bay reaches 240 m water depth.

Larger tidal range occur during spring tides (spring range), when the gravitational forces of both the Moon and Sun are aligned (at syzygy), reinforcing each other in the same direction (new moon) or in opposite directions (full moon).

The unique shape and size of the Bay of Fundy are key to its extreme tidal events. It's shaped like a funnel, with its wide mouth opening to the Atlantic Ocean and narrowing as it goes inland. This means that as the tide comes in, water is funnelled into an increasingly narrow space, causing it to rise.

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. Many accounts on the web attribute the high tidal range to the shape of the bay.

Tides are the periodic rise and fall of the sea caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth. Fundy's tides are the highest in the world because of an unusual combination of factors: resonance and the shape of the bay.