Getting the tide right is important for some kinds of diving. At
seamounts and other exposed sites, there may only be a narrow window
when the dive can be safely attempted. Lagoons and extrances to oceanic
atolls can be great dives with lots of fish action on an incoming tide,
but a milky mess on the ebb. The timing of some great marine wildilife
behavior (such as spawning) is closely linked to tides as well. I've
long been looking for a good tide prediction program with a database
broad enough to cover some of the sites I dive here in southeast Asia.
Now I've found it.

For me, there are four stations around Bali (one at Benoa, near where I
live, another at Buleleng in North Bali (not far from Tulamben), two
more in the straits between Java and northwest Bali (near Menjangan
Island), and two more on western Lombok, making it possible to combine
with the Benoa data to get reasonable times for Nusa Penida. For
Komodo, there is no station in the park itself or at Labuanbajo, but
there is a station on southwest Flores near the southeast corner of the
park and another in Sape Bay on Sumbawa opposite the western side of
the park (and another for Bima), again making it possible to at least
roughly interpolate tides at Komodo sites. There are also tide stations
for Kupang, Ende, two in south Sulawesi, Alor, and wonder of wonders,
even one site at Saonek for Raja Empat. Quite a few stations for PNG
and the Solomons too. For North America, of coure, the coverage is much
better.

WXTide32, a free (Windows) program by Mike Hopper, is based on XTide, a
UNIX program written by Dave Flater. The program is very easy to
install and use. It covers more than 9,500 tide stations worldwide, and
can present tidal data in a variety of formats. For North America,
there are also 100+ tidal current stations (don't ask me how this part
of the program works - I don't know.) The current version of WXTide
(4.2) was released in July, supports World Vector Shoreline (WVS) map
files, which must be downloaded and installed separately. These are
different from the NOAA WVS files, but are also free. The full set of
WVS map data files provide zoom factors from 1:43,000,000 to better
than 1:250,000, which means you may be able to zoom right in to your
favorite dive site.

Few things in life that are really good are free, but this is.
(Needless to say, I have no relationship with the author of this
program - I'm just delighted to find it.

WXTide32 :
   http://www.wxtide32.com/index.html

Note: There is a also a very decent tide prediction program for the
Palm Pilot. I use this to time my walks on the beach at the lagoon with
my dog. Though it doesn't have quite the database that WXTide does, it
may be possible to insert new stations with time offsets and correction
factors derived from the WXTide32 database.

Tide Tool for Palms :
  http://www.toolworks.com/bilofsky/tidetool/

Enjoy

Frogfish (Robert Delfs)

Tabula International Ltd.
Email:  <[log in to unmask]
Phone:  +62 361 282-743
Website:  www.tabula-international.com