MAIDSTONE resident Geoff Nicholls joined tide trackers converging at Altona beach on Sunday to photograph the king tide.
Waves were expected to peak at one metre above mean sea level at 4.15pm, but a calm day meant the sea-level rise didn’t make much of a ripple in Hobsons Bay. Previous king tides have resulted in water flowing across the esplanade.
Hobsons Bay Council had paired with Green Cross, an organisation founded by former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev, for the ‘Witness King Tides’ project.
Mr Nicholls was among those photographing the king tide so future generations can map the sea-level rise and Australia’s changing coastline.
“We’ve been watching the tide come in and it’s starting to accelerate,” Mr Nicholls said, standing at Altona Pier shortly after 3.30pm. “It’s all supposedly due to the position of the Earth and the sun and the moon in relationship to each other which magnifies the gravitational effect of everything, and it makes big variations between the high tide and the low tide when all this alignment takes place.
“I’m interested because as a teenager I used to come down; I lived on the western side of Melbourne. I’ve returned to Victoria and I’m sort of reconnecting with all those places I used to knock around 55 or more years ago and it’s interesting to see all the changes that have taken place.
“In the time that I’ve been away from Altona there’s been a lot of changes where the council has built up all of the sand base and that’s extended the beach out more so they’ve countered any tidal effects there with the sand reclamation, which is terrific.”
The council was last night expected to endorse its draft Altona and Seaholme foreshore and community vision. The plan will be on public display for six weeks for comment. It states that challenges faced by Altona and Seaholme include “higher density housing” and its vulnerability “to predicted impacts and threats of climate variability such as sea-level rise, erosion and increased frequency and severity of storm surge and high rainfall events”.
To check out photos of Sunday’s king tide taken at Altona and around Australia, visit witnesskingtides.org.
