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Listening to the Tide Roll In

February 26, 2014

It might look like it just washed ashore, but this instrumented frame is fixed in place on Nova Scotia’s mega-tidal Bay of Fundy for a month at a time to help scientists measure the near-shore dynamics of the seabed and ocean waves. Buried in the seabed just behind the frame are two hydrophones, operated by WHOI scientist Ying-Tsong Lin and postdoc David Barclay, colleagues of lead scientist Alex Hay of Canada’s Dalhousie University. The hydrophones are listening for the sound of ocean sediments transported in and out, information Lin and Barclay use to determine the size and quantity of sand moved by the surf.(Photo by David Barclay, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)