Crests appear in red, troughs in blue.
Refraction of wave energy away from the canyon axis results in low wave heights directly to the east of the canyon head. A wave crest that refracts back to the north of the canyon head interferes with the portion of the same crest that has stayed to the north of the canyon, producing complex interference patterns and high wave heights. More realistic random incident wave conditions do not completely mask these bathymetrically-induced interference patterns because the node and antinode locations change slowly with variations in the incident wave period and direction. In addition, the node and antinode locations are insensitive to the initial phase of the wave crest at the model's offshore boundary. Spectral refraction-diffraction simulations produce smaller maximum wave heights north of the canyon, and larger minimum wave heights east of the canyon compared with spectral refraction simulations.