Sunday, August 26, 2007

Click Here for Tide, Moon, Sun Rise/Set Information- A User's Guide

Many may have noticed a new link at the top of the page (just below the hotline phone number) and some may have even attempted to navigate the link to find out the tide information for Cape May.

As well, many by now may have realized that this tide site is one that has been mentioned on View from the Cape before; http://www.saltwatedtides.com/. In an effort to make your Cape May visitation research easier we wanted to provide an easy to use tide chart but found that various options which would refresh on their own were to cumbersome or did not allow for the intuitive use we were looking for in a tide site. So, I wanted to give a quick "how to navigate" guide to the website we are using.

I was first introduced to this particular tide site when I was doing Red knot surveys along the gulf coast of Florida and have been using it ever since. I personally find that it is very easy to use with a significant number of sites available for most any of the places I've been where I wanted to know tide information.


So, what I have done is to create a quick tutorial so that you can get a brief understanding of how this particular site works. After this it's up to you to play with the settings on the site and gather your own tide information.

To start, click the link at the top of the page. i.e. "Click here for Tide, Moon, Sun Rise / Set Information." A new window should open which shows the Saltwatertides.com site. At the bottom of this "home page" click the "tide" link. i.e. "Onwards to the tide region selection page."

Now follow the instructions to the side of each picture and you'll get tide information for where ever you may choose.



After you click the "tide" link you will see a list of states offered. Obviously we will be choosing New Jersey. NOTE: click on the picture and the image will enlarge in a new window for better viewing.








Here we scrolled down the list of sites for the State of New Jersey. You may notice that the list of sites starts at the northern coast of NJ and follows down to Cape May and then back up the Delaware Bay cost of NJ. This is important to note for any state for which you may be researching tide. In this example we have chosen "Cape May, Atlantic Ocean" found just above the "Delaware Bay" section. Notice the circle is filled in with a little green dot.





Next it's time to choose the month in which you are looking for tidal information. Also, choose the day of the month and the number of days for which you want tide information. Here we've chosen August 2007. We are looking for tide tables starting on the 25th day of the month and running for the full 14 days. Now you simply click the "Get Tides" button and up pops the tide information your looking for.




NOTE: you can choose up to 14 days for tides, as well, you can
query many months in advance. If you are thinking about
putting together a WSB team you could look up the tide
information for May 10, 2008.



Now, you have all the tide information you were seeking for the given state and location. You'll notice that not only do you get the high and low tide information; you also get the sunrise and sunset times for the location in addition to the moonrise and set times. Also a nice addition to this chart is the moon phase.







Hopefully after this you have a good grasp of how to navigate this particular tide site. You can hopefully see why we chose this site as well. Good luck and my the tides be in your favor.

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