look at this tidal range this is in meters okay so 15 meters these all these numbers are in meters so roughly three meters where we live which is roughly nine feet which is what i said right but if you go here all the way up into the bay of fundy area we're talking 15 meters which is roughly you know 45 50 feet something like that so let's take a look this is the largest tidal range in the world in the bay of fundy something i want you to know um here's a blow up of the bay of fundy right here and this is where we have the largest tidal ranges in the world you can see here's a giant ship at high tide that's docked at low tide these things are huge right that's like 45 50 feet here of ship that is completely underneath this pier now okay that it was docked to so let's take a little look at the bay of fundy [Music] on canada's eastern coast tucked between the provinces of new brunswick and nova scotia lies the bay of fundy a 270 kilometer long body of water that's home to one of the strangest daily occurrences on earth it has the largest tidal range in the world while the average difference between high tide and low tide is about 1 meter throughout the world water levels in parts of this bay rise and fall by 14 meters over the course of 6 hours and 13 minutes the average time between each high and low tide in the bay tides move more than 160 billion metric tons of water that's more than the combined flow of all the world's rivers put together so what exactly is going on here and is there a way to harness all that energy we know that the gravitational flow of the moon and to a lesser extent the sun is responsible for creating the tides but the daily phenomenon in the bay of fundy results from a perfect confluence of conditions that exaggerates the tide's effects particularly the bay's size and shape with a heavy dose of really excellent timing the bay funding is essentially a huge earthen basin and any liquid in the basin will rhythmically slosh back and forth once it's set in motion it's called seishing there's a whole word for it sometimes oscillation and it happens in most confined bodies of water like lakes and bays but the speed at which liquid oscillates depends on how long and deep the basin is that's holding it as water oscillates the surface will rise at one end of the basin then at the other side and then back again in a bathtub you may have noticed it takes a few seconds for water to oscillate in a single cycle but in the bay of fundy it takes about 12 and a half hours which coincides almost exactly with the cycle of the tides as the waters of the atlantic ocean enter and leave the bay so essentially the natural oscillation of fundy's water corresponds with and is reinforced by the tides the effect is a lot like giving an extra couple of pushes to a kid on a swing one push from behind when they're swinging forward and an additional nudge in the opposite direction when they're headed back and the shape of the bay helps amplify this effect as well fundy's topography is kind of like a funnel becoming both narrower and shallower in its northern portions which helps force the water higher onto the shore now the movement of such huge volumes of water conveys an incredible amount of energy and slowly we're learning how to harness that energy thanks to a tidal power plant in the bay of fundy that's one of only three such plants in the world the power plant consists mainly of a kind of gated dam called a barrage that's built across an inlet of the bay when the tide comes in the gates let the water flow into a huge reservoir at high tide the gates close and that stored water is run through a system of turbines that spin to generate electricity but the barrage setup is pretty inefficient and a host of marine wildlife including a couple of whales have been known to get trapped in the reservoir so the next generation of tidal energy in the bay of fundy will include tidal turbines anchored to the ocean floor they'll use the movement of flowing water to generate electricity in the same way that wind turbines use moving air because water is about 800 times more dense than air tidal turbines don't have to spin as fast since this whole phenomenon of the bay of fundy is driven mostly by the gravitational action of the moon you might think of this useful byproduct of the tides as lunar power in any case it's just one more way in which the world is uniquely awesome thanks so yeah like i said this guy he talks he talks very fast but um a big thing that i want you to get from this is that there are 400 different factors and he started talking about some of those factors right um this resonance factor like the bathtub he was talking about causing this to be the largest tidal ranges in the world it's amazing some of the stuff that you get to see in that so let's take another look at a place right here reversing falls and have a look at that all right [Music] here so [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] now something i want you to get from this reversing falls video is that idea of a slack tide right a slack tied meaning oh it's that time where high tide and low tide they're transitioning right it's gotten really really low and it's starting to come back up that transition is when it's a slack tie that's when the tides aren't moving that fast or when the tide is getting really really high and then it's starting to come back down that spot where it peaks those are slack times okay so make sure you know that i'll be asking you on that and that's when they use that slack tied to get that ship moving in and out of that harbor right okay from here we gotta check out some really cool things so let's take a look we got a tidal bore right um it's a true tidal wave okay it's a wall of water that moves up a river due to an incoming tide so literally the river's flowing out to the sea and the tide is coming in and that causes waves and there's a little sense of a wave right here and we'll start with this wave once again can't help myself i just have to put in some waves to this we'll start with a mellow wave all right so take a look at the mellow wave all right hopefully you enjoyed that video and that mellow wave now let's move along to actually some bigger tidal waves all right some tidal boards here we go now we're going to the amazon river right and we can get waves up to 15 feet high that travel 500 miles inland and reach speeds up to 15 miles per hour so we'll start with this puerto roca right which is a a name that they use for this wave in brazil and you'll check it out let's let's let's see this way more now from our special series of reports from the amazon frank contreras has more on what locals call the puerto roca title borah [Music] riding the waves not on the ocean but on a river here in northern brazil in this part of the amazon rainforest the earth and moon lined up as predicted creating the necessary conditions to produce this wave known as a tidal bore in brazil it's called apororoka usually the water flows out of the river into the atlantic ocean but for just a few days the atlantic pushes against the river reversing its flow it makes even the most seasoned surfers nervous if something goes wrong there's no jet ski out here to rescue us i'm a bit apprehensive nervous all that heat and adrenaline but when you jump off the boat you calm down and ride when the wave hits some of south america's best wave riders took advantage of this spectacular natural phenomenon out on the sea the best ones can stay up for just a minute or two but the waves on this river can be ridden for 20 even 30 minutes brazil's powerful tidal bore has been known to wipe away trees and even wild animals from the rainforest still the boraroka is considered a symbol of national pride and the surging wave can easily pull a man under three of the four surfers are now back on board this speedboat but the fourth one named bingo is still missing so we're out searching for him now more than half an hour goes by and there's still no sign of him if the missing surfer gets separated from his board he could easily be swept out to see we spot him on a distant shore he's safe and sound as we head back to land brazil's five-time surfing champion adilton mariano celebrates another successful ride on the puroroka he's done it more than 30 times once for a world record 37 minutes