Grab your camera: City of Vancouver is looking for photos of king tides
Angela Danyluk says collecting photos of shorelines during high tides is integral to planning for storms
The annual king tides have returned to the South Coast, marking the highest tides of the year.
The king tides are expected from Nov. 23-30. And for the second year, the City of Vancouver is asking for citizens to help document the shorelines by taking photos and submitting them to the King Tide Photo Collecting Project.
Angela Danyluk — a senior sustainability specialist and biologist with the City of Vancouver — says last year the city uploaded more than 400 citizen-submitted photos from Burrard Inlet, English Bay and the Fraser River to its website.
A picture is worth so much more than a thousand words… on Nov 23-30, snap a photo of the waterfront and upload it to <a href="https://t.co/vFAo8wEZGy">https://t.co/vFAo8wEZGy</a> – and help the City of Vancouver document the changing shoreline during <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KingTides?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KingTides</a>, the highest tides of the year. <a href="https://t.co/BmH75Z2LnP">pic.twitter.com/BmH75Z2LnP</a>
—@CityofVancouver"This information and these pictures help us raise awareness about the implications of future sea levels caused by climate change," Danyluk said.
The data collected is used to monitor the changing shorelines and help update the city's flood hazard models.
Danyluk says monitoring is important because as the sea level rises, it changes the shoreline and affects the habitats of sea life.
"It also causes greater vulnerability to flooding when we get king tides and storm surge events which add anywhere from 30 centimetres to 100 centimetres of extra water along our shores."
Although storm surges are not expected until later in the week, Danyluk urges people to take photos, even if the levels don't appear drastically different.
You can submit your photos to vancouver.ca/kingtides
With files from The Early Edition