**4.1 Oceanographic and meteorological data collection**

Bathymetric depth points were digitized from Admiralty bathymetric charts for the Hellshire coastline area and the entire South-East Shelf. For the finer-scale bathymetry required of the reef and bay areas, water depth (± 0.1 m) was measured to supplement the Admiralty data using an echo-sounder with Trimble Garmin GPS and post processed to account for tidal elevation differences from mean sea level. Wind speed (± 0.1 m s-1) and wind direction (± 0.1°) data were collected from the nearby Normal Manley International Airport weather center as continuous two-minute averages over the entire sampling period (1999 to 2003). Long-term current measurements for speed (± 0.10 cm s-1) and direction (± 0.1°) were recorded continuously by Inter-Ocean S4 current meters at four sites inside (Table 1) and outside of Wreck Bay.


Table 1. Deployment specifications for long-term field current data collection in Wreck Bay. Hydrodynamic model outputs were compared with these measurements for verification.

Hourly tidal amplitudes (± 1 mm) were calculated using Foreman's Tidal Analysis (Foreman, 1977) and Prediction Program, incorporating mean sea-level and tidal amplitude data over a 40-year period from Port Royal, a nearby tide station. Hourly incident wave height values (± 1 cm) used in the over-the-reef flow calculations were taken from Refraction-Diffraction (REFDIF) wave models (Kirby & Dalrymple, 1991) of the shoreline (Burgess et al., 2005). The deepwater wave climate obtained from JONSWAP (Hasselmann et al., 1973) analysis was used to run the REFDIF models in order to carry the deepwater waves from the continental shelf to the shoreline. Near-shore conditions were simulated at 50% occurrence (average conditions) and used as input into the hydrodynamic model.
