Whose tide is highest? Canadian towns battle it out over Guinness World Record title | World records

For visitors to Burntcoat Head Park in Nova Scotia, a rush along the Russet coast of the Atlantic Ocean is a pilgrimage on the site of one of the great natural wonders of the planet.

Twice a day, more than 100 billion tonnes of seawater fill and drain Fundy bay – a figure comparable to the flow of all the rivers of fresh water in the combined world.

For this reason, the community has long and proudly proclaimed their large -scale tides as the highest in the world – an assertion confirmed by Guinness World Records.

But a row has broken out on these claims, with a Canadian northern community saying that new data – and long -standing local knowledge – actually suggest their tides increasing.

“All we hear is how Fundy bay has the highest tides,” explains Adamie Delisle Alaku, who lives in the Quebec Nunavik region and is executive vice-president of the environment, fauna and research department of Makivvik. “Bravo to them for all the work they have accomplished to promote it – and we want them not unhappy – but reality is that ours is higher.”

Makivvik, the organization that represents the interests of the Inuit in Nunavik, said earlier this month that the Tasiujaq community would suppose “its legitimate place” as the location of the highest range of tides in the world after fresh data found their tides reaching almost 2 meters higher than those of Burntcoat Head.

The data does not surprise people from Tasiujaq, a community of 420 people who are at the head of an fjord type entrance. The tides are a oddity of geography and swell of these waters, which rush in the wider leaves of Ungava bay, once reached 16.6 meters in 1953, higher than everywhere else on the planet.

But the world of tide archives is obscure and the quarrels burst on the height of total tides and the range of wider tides, the latter is claimed by Burntcoat Head.

In 2003, the Nunavik Tourism Association attempted a new study of the tides in order to challenge the title of Burntcoat Head – but the failure of the battery in one of the key sensors meant that the devices produced inconsistent results. However, the fragments of data they recovered alluded to a range of tidal tides which was “more substantial” than the current world record, said Delisle Alaku.

Now, the latest study, conducted between 2024 and 2025 using specialized equipment, local divers and strategic sensors’ placement, found a tidal range of 16.3 meters at the northern end of the Leave Basin, compared to the scope of Burntcoat Head 14.5 meters.

“We are really excited by the results, which confirm what we have known for a long time on the tides here,” said Delisle Alaku.

The Makivvik Corporation, which oversees land complaints for the Inuit in the region, says it has submitted its conclusions to the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), which the Ministry is currently analyzing and examining before drawing scientific conclusions.

In the meantime, the federal department of peaches and oceans suggested that the tides of the two sites were in fact the same. “It is very regrettable that they say that the tides are linked,” said Delisle Alaku. “We hope they study our submission quickly and draw the same conclusions as us.”

Delisle Alaku says that northern communities often have trouble with weather data and tides and new results will therefore give them new information on how to sail in complete safety in the region. In the future, he plans to show tidal movements in real time, giving people in the region a rare overview of precise and useful information.

But there could also be another advantage in taking the crown.

The representatives of Burntcoat Head Park did not respond to a request for comments, but the signaling around the park and in the region, proclaiming the highest tides in the world, underlines the quantity in play.

The tidal apartments and the famous Hopewell rocks in New Brunswick draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year – and generate hundreds of millions of tourist dollars for the larger region.

Delisle Alaku said that if an influx of curious tourists was unlikely, the new data could attract those who want to live the natural world to its extremes.

A recent study revealed that the oldest rocks on the planet, dating from 4.16 billion years, are located in Nunavik. And the impact crater of a perfectly circular pongualite meteorite – the “Crystal Eye of Nunavik” – is filled with some of the most pure water from the earth.

“And now they have something else to see that really shows the beauty of these lands and waters,” said Delisle Alaku. “And they will really live the highest tides in the world.”