Distant Reef and Seaweed Cove
I enjoy playing with perspective and creating dynamic spatial effects in my ocean recordings. On the coast, the stereo spectrum can be incredibly wide, and in some locations, there’s also a strong sense of depth, as in this recording.
Seaweed Cove is my name for a small cove in Clam Harbour, Nova Scotia, where the beach and water are thickly blanketed in seaweed. When waves from the open ocean enter the cove, they slow down and transform—no longer purely water, but something thicker, vegetal. To my ear, the sound of these seaweed waves breaking is uniquely muted and restrained.
About 150 metres offshore from the cove, a school-bus-sized reef emerges at mid to low tide. When the reef is exposed, waves break across it, re-form, then roll on to their final destination in the cove. This recording documents that journey: distant waves breaking over the reef, followed seconds later by their softened arrival on the seaweed bed. Throughout, a subtle stereo dynamic of roaring wind and swell frames the central action of the reef and cove.
This track is part of a 2024 compilation of field recordings entitled Coastal Contours and Voices. Download the compilation for free from my Bandcamp page: https://chikwhite.bandcamp.