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Boy's body: 'Dynamic' tides carry objects for miles in hours
MIKE ARCHBOLD; Staff writer
The tidal currents of South Puget Sound make it easier to understand how the body of a missing boy showed up on a Fox Island beach 20 miles north of Dana Passage in the Olympia area.
Azriel Carver, 8, was last seen alive Saturday night with his mother, Shantina Smiley, north of Olympia. Her van was found on the beach near Boston Harbor off Dana Passage. She is still missing.
The outgoing current heads north out of Dana Passage and circulates around Anderson and McNeil islands before heading for the Tacoma Narrows, said Debbie Payton, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Seattle.
The Narrows is the drain, collecting the outgoing tide for all of South Puget Sound.
“If a wood chip is moving on the surface of the water (in Puget Sound) the net movement always is north and out of Puget Sound,” Payton said. “It may or may not beach. It depends on the wind.”
The combination of tides, tide-created currents and wind make projecting the exact journey of an item on the surface difficult.
Even the object itself is a variable. Payton said bodies initially sink to the bottom where current movement is less. They tend to stay there until they decompose and gases refloat the body to the surface.
Then current and wind take over.
Judging by the current speed north of Olympia, she said, a floating object could move eight to 12 nautical miles one way on a single tide. Going from Dana Passage to the southern end of Fox Island isn’t unreasonable, she said.
The island is the last barrier for objects floating north to the Narrows.
Unless the winds blow, floating objects tend to stay close to the center of a narrow passage where the current normally is faster. Even if a wind blew an object toward a beach, she said the next tide could refloat it and send it on its way.
“It’s very dynamic,” Payton said. “Where the water is deep and wide, the current is slow. Where it is shallow and narrow it goes fast.”
In the Puget Sound that dynamic can change rapidly, she said
Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692
mike.archbold@thenewstribune.com
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I hope it's ok to post this copywritten article that was in our paper today. I found it very interesting.