Cold water, big tides

After a very cold night, there was a layer of ice on Pedder Bay again this morning which allowed for some interesting observations and data collection by marine scientists.

Data below were collected by second year Marine Science students at two different times of the morning.

	8:05	am	11:00	am
Depth (m)	Temp (oC)	Salinity (ppt)	Temp (oC)	Salinity (ppt)
0	3.7	28.4	4.6	25.9
0.5	5.8	29.3	5.8	30.1
1.0	6.4	30.3	6.7	30.6
2.0	6.7	30.6	6.7	30.7
3.0	6.7	30.7	6.8	30.8
4.0	6.8	30.7	6.9	30.8
5.0	6.8	30.7	6.9	30.8

One major conclusion can be drawn:

The water is COLD (right down to 5 m where we usually measure temperatures around 10^oC). It is so cold that students’ tongues are turning blue:

Wait a minute… the cold is not the reason for the blue tongues in these Biology students!

We are also experiencing big tides these days (2.8 m tidal range). High tides in the early afternoon:

D block 13:15 11 Jan 2017

F block 9:45 12 Jan 2017

G block 11:00 12 Jan 2017

Tomma touching the top of the piling

Then low tides at night:

Emilio, Heather & Millie at low tide (20:15 11 Jan 2017)

Interesting times!

A stormy day and another very high tide

With waves breaking beside the Pearson College dock and an extremely high tide again, it was an exciting morning in the floating building.

Above are B block marine scientists beside the pile with the tide gauge on it. I’ll take another photo of the same team during a low tide…

A very high tide

It is rare that the tide is so high that the lower ramp is horizontal, but today it was… And the upper ramp was inclined upward to the floating building.And the pilings were still securing the building and dock, but they were relatively quite short…

…just slightly more than one Budnik!

Below is a photo from a king tide last year:

A very high tide

With all the rain, the low atmospheric pressure and the spring tides we are seeing evidence of very high high tides – a king tide. Michal was able to touch the top of the piling.

On that piling is a tide gauge that was set up by a four students for their Group 4 project. Although it is not ‘calibrated’, I suspect they did not see such a high during their sampling.

 

Check out the height of the water under the ramp to the lower floor of the floating building:

And the angle of the ramp to the upper floor:

For comparison, I’ll post additional photos of extremely low tides when they occur.