WHAT DO SPRING AND KING TIDES MEAN FOR OCEAN SPORTS LOVERS?
During spring or extreme tides, water rushes in and out faster. This causes stronger rips and currents and has a greater effect on the size of waves and the movement of fish. On the Ocean Calendar, you can see that some months and some moons have more extreme tides than others. It is also possible to see that the most extreme tides occur in the days AFTER the full and new moons, not before. Every inlet or estuary has different delays according to the width of the opening to the ocean. Inlets and river mouths delay the tide times by minutes or hours according to the width and depth of their opening to the sea. The further up river, the longer the delay, and the smaller the tide height range. River mouths in general, reduce the tide height range upriver. So the tide height range up the Clarence River is less than on the ocean beaches. The ocean tides take, on average, 2 hours to reach Maclean. But this delay, supplied by the Manly Hydraulics Laboratory, is an annual average only. All ave
