The Styrous® Viewfinder: King Tide, Chinese New Year & Rees Erwin

January 22, 2023

King Tide, Chinese New Year & Rees Erwin

King Tide - 2023

photo by Rees Erwin

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. Even though both the sun and moon influence our tides, the moon’s gravitational pull is about twice as strong than that of the sun. Therefore, we experience different tidal forces as a result of how far away the sun, moon, and earth respectively are from each other. When the earth, moon, and sun are near alignment we get a new moon (moon between the sun and earth) . . .

Perigean - Spring tide (New Moon)

oceanservice_noaa.gov

. . . and full moon (earth between the moon and sun).

Perigean- Spring tide (Full Moon)
oceanservice_noaa.gov

This alignment causes an increase in the gravitational pull roughly twice a month called ‘spring tides’. The moon’s closest position to the earth is called a ‘perigee.’ When a full or new moon coincides with perigee we get perigean spring tides. These are slightly larger tidal events that happen about three or four times a year.

For every super high tide of these events there is an equally low tide. This occurred yesterday during the new moon and the Chinese New Year.

Rees Erwin and a group of his friends took a dinghy out into the middle of the bay where a patch of land emerged from the waters of the bay to temporarily form an island and he photographically captured the event quite eloquently.

photos by Rees Erwin