Bay of Fundy. The Bay of Fundy is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the US state of Maine. It has an extremely high tidal range. The name is likely a corruption of the French word Fendu, meaning split. The tidal range in the Bay of Fundy is about 13 metres. Some tides are higher than others, depending on the position of the moon, the sun, and atmospheric conditions. Tides are semidiurnal, meaning they have two highs and two lows each day with about six hours and 13 minutes between each high and low tide. Because of tidal resonance in the funnel-shaped bay, the tides that flow through the channel are very powerful. In one 12 hour tidal cycle, about 110,000,000,000 short tons of water flows in and out of the bay, which is twice as much as the combined total flow of all the rivers of the world over the same period. They are as powerful as 8,000 train engines or 25 million horses. The Annapolis Royal Generating Station a 20 MW tidal power station on the Annapolis River upstream of Annapolis Royal is one of the few tidal generating stations in the world, and the only one in North America. Most of the rivers have a tidal bore, a wave front of the incoming tide that bores its way up a river against its normal flow. Notable ones include those on the Maccan, St. Croix, and Kennetcook rivers. Before the construction of a causeway in 1968 and subsequent siltation of the river, the Petitcodiac River had one of the world's largest tidal bores, up to 2 metres high. Since the opening of the causeway gates in 2010, the bore has been coming back, and in 2013 surfers rode it a record-breaking 29 kilometres. Other phenomena include the Reversing Falls near the mouth of the Saint John River, a rip tide at Cape Enrage, and the Old Sow whirlpool at Passamaquoddy Bay. The story of the Fundy Basin begins about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic, when all land on earth was part of a supercontinent called Pangaea. At that time what is now The Maritimes was situated near the equator and had a warm tropical climate and vegetation was lush. As continental drift reshaped the world, rift valleys formed, including the Cobequid-Chedabucto fault system. During the continental breakup, magma erupted as basaltic lavas and left igneous rock formations such as the columnar jointing which can be seen on Brier and Grand Manan islands, among other places around the bay. These flows often are the sites of rarer mineral deposits including agate, amethyst, and stilbite, the latter being the provincial mineral of Nova Scotia. These rifts filled with sediment which became sedimentary rock. Many fossils have been found along the Fundy shoreline. The oldest dinosaur fossil in Canada was found at Burntcoat Head. Very early reptiles have been discovered in Carboniferous tree trunks at Joggins. Wasson Bluff has a rich trove of Jurassic fossils. The bay is an aspiring member of the Global Geoparks Network, a UNESCO initiative to promote and conserve the planet's geological heritage. Although some land areas are protected, there is no formal marine protection zone in the bay, but the Conservation Council of New Brunswick is working to protect the ecosystem of the bay. The endangered North Atlantic right whale can be seen in the bay.
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