Vancouver Island Nature Tours

ing tide” is a phrase used in Australia and the South Pacific to describe the highest tides of the year. They occur once in the summer and once in the winter. In Australia, they are considered quite dangerous for surfing. They are also becoming recognized as useful indicators of any effect of rising sea levels. A year ago Australians wholeheartedly supported a new initiative to photograph the king tide as a way of documenting the current maximum degree of inundation. And a few days ago they experienced the highest king tide in 18 years.

According to Tina Neal, the Adaptation Advisor for the BC Ministry of the Environment, “This initiative will help us identify and catalogue coastal areas currently vulnerable to tidal inundation.  Local expertise and local knowledge will be extremely valuable in identifying locations that are already subject to high water events and helping us to visualize what future sea level rise could mean for BC.”

So I got out on January 4th with my camera on the Somass Estuary.  Here are a few of the pictures. The first one was taken on 26 December about an hour before an average high tide.  The highest it would have gotten would be another 10 centimeters. The second picture is from approximately the same location taken on the king tide.

Normal High Tide at Somass Estuary

King Tide at the Somass Estuary, 4 Jan 2010

There is a dramatic difference! In this case there is very little to damage. A flooded hayfield isn’t much of a big deal. But if I turn around and look the other way, there is a big differnence. The city sewage lagoon and the paper mill effluent lagoon are both situated on the estuary and there both vulnerable to sea level rise.  In this case, I figure it is about 1.5 meters before flooding of these ponds happens.

A foot access from the pipeline that crosses the estuary.

City sewage lagoon is on the left

Finally there is a pipeline that traverses the entire estuary carrying water from Sproat lake to the paper mill. It is raised and is supported along it’s length by pilings so that it is quite a bit higher even than the dykes around the mill pond and the sewage lagoon.  (As an aside there is a wonderful walkway along each side of it that allows you a nice view of the estuary.)  Still it was ruptured by the Tsunami from the Ankorage earthquake in 1964.

The pipeline that carries water from Sproat lake to the paper mill.

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