Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Peregrines have been successfully reintroduced to the inner Bay of Fundy, however, through a ten-year
captive-release program begun in 1982 at Fundy National Park. Just as the arrival of shorebirds is timed to the
explosion of mud shrimp in the Fundy mudflats, the young peregrines' fledging coincides with the shorebird
migration into the region. The peeps serve as a ready source of prey for the young birds as they learn to hunt
for themselves.
Peregrine falcons have made a remarkable recovery from ddt poisoning and now occupy most of the traditional aeries
in the Bay of Fundy.
THE CANADIAN PIONEER
marine biologist A.G. Huntsman listed the elemental factors that were important to
the great productivity observed in the Bay of Fundy: “. . . a thin layer of water, containing a variety of sub-
stances in solution, lying between the air above with its gaseous substances and the earth below with its vari-
ous solid substances, and exposed to the sunlight coming through the transparent air, seems an ideal location
for the production of life. Shallow inlets from the ocean have such characters, and one of these is the Bay of
Fundy.” These critical conditions are met not only at the mouth of the bay, where Huntsman concentrated his
research, but elsewhere along the seaweed-draped shoreline and islands of the Gulf of Maine, as well as on
Georges Bank, the shallow “oceanic miracle” at the center of gulf. Together, these ecosystems account for the
great diversity of life encountered in the tidally driven Bay of Fundy-Gulf of Maine ecoregion.
