The movements of the oceans, and the liminal margins of sea, land, and fresh water have profound implications for human/nonhuman life. Those movements and margins are rhythmically affected by tides which are thus a key means by which the forceful materiality of water is animated. Where salt water meets land and river mouths, ceaseless, varying, daily, monthly, and seasonal rhythms of sea level rise and fall occur. Complex patterns and rhythms of intertidal areas, currents, mixing of salt and fresh water, erosion, transportation, and deposition, and many impacts on human systems are created. Due to location, orientation, and sea/land topography, coastal areas around the world are subject to microtides, mesotides, or macrotides (4 m and higher). Particularly in the case of the last, the rhythms of the tides extend out into a range of intersecting ecosocial assemblages. This paper discusses tides and their rhythms, sets them in debates about temporality/nature, and introduces the idea of rhythmpattern which is timespace animated. It also considers dissonance and consonance within and between tidal rhythmpatterns and their overwriting by development.
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