NZ Tide Pulse
Every twelve and a half hours the Pacific tide rises and falls along New Zealand’s coast — but it doesn’t arrive everywhere at once. The bulge of high water sweeps around the country, hitting Auckland’s east coast hours ahead of Wellington, hours behind Onehunga on the west coast despite being a few kilometres away as the gull flies. This map shows the rhythm: 28 ports pulsing in time with their own tide, and the tidal currents through Cook Strait, French Pass, Kaipara Heads, Manukau Heads and Foveaux Strait flowing the way they actually flow right now. Click or tap any port for its next high and low tide times.
Click a port for tide times
What you’re looking at
The map’s two layers are doing different jobs. The rings at every port show the tide height — how far above or below mean sea level the water sits right now. Bigger rings mean higher water; cyan means the tide is rising, orange means it’s falling, pale means it’s near the peak or trough and momentarily slack. That gives you the wave of high water passing around New Zealand: it hits the east coast of the North Island first, sweeps down past Wellington, then takes another six hours to come around the south of the country and back up the west coast. Because of that lag, the east and west coasts are in opposite phases at any given moment. Click or tap any port to pin a card with its next high and low tide times and a 24-hour curve — you can also link straight to a port by adding ?port=auckland to the page address.
The five arrows are tidal currents at the country’s strongest tidal-stream hotspots. They use real port data but two different models depending on the geography:
For the straits (Cook Strait, French Pass, Foveaux), water flows from the side with higher tide to the side with lower. We compare two ports on opposite sides — Wellington vs Nelson for Cook Strait, Nelson vs Picton for French Pass, Bluff vs Te Waewae Bay for Foveaux. The arrow points from high to low; the bigger the height difference, the bigger the arrow. Cook Strait is the dramatic one because Wellington and Nelson are six hours out of phase: when one is at high tide the other is at low tide, and a couple of metres of head difference drives a four-knot current through the gap between the islands.
For the harbour entrances (Kaipara Heads and Manukau Heads), the model is different. These are big estuaries with one narrow mouth. The harbour interior lags the open ocean by roughly half an hour to an hour. So flow direction at the heads tracks the rate of change of ocean height, not the height itself: rising tide at the heads means water is rushing in to fill the harbour catching up to the ocean; falling tide means water is draining out. That’s why the arrow direction follows the rate of tide change, and why peak flow happens at mid-tide rather than at high water.
Tide heights come from the Open-Meteo marine forecast, and the page quietly refetches every few hours so a tab left open stays current. Onehunga’s tide is read from the ocean just off Manukau Heads — the forecast model doesn’t resolve the harbour interior, and the open-coast cell is what carries the true west-coast timing. The current arrows are computed live in your browser from those heights using the models above. They are honest first approximations — actual tidal-stream speeds depend on channel geometry, friction, weather and a dozen other things this model ignores. For navigation, the official source is the LINZ tide tables and tidal-stream atlases. This map is the ambient picture, not a chart.
If you want to know why the wave moves around New Zealand the way it does — and why your school’s “Moon pulls a bulge of water” explanation isn’t the whole story — there’s a separate explainer at How tides actually work.
Why tides arrive at different times around New Zealand
Tides are caused mainly by the Moon’s gravitational pull on the oceans, with a smaller contribution from the Sun. The Earth’s daily rotation through the resulting bulge of water produces roughly two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours and 50 minutes (the moon orbits a little more slowly than the Earth rotates, hence the daily delay). But that bulge doesn’t pass over every coastline at once. As it sweeps around the planet it encounters land, gets squeezed through gaps, sloshes inside enclosed seas and runs across continental shelves — all of which delay or amplify it.
For New Zealand the result is striking. High tide reaches the east coast first, working its way down from the Bay of Islands and Auckland through Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier and Wellington. The west coast — Westport, Greymouth, Hokitika — runs roughly six hours behind, because the wave has to travel south past the country and round it. So when Wellington Harbour is full, Westport is nearly empty, and an enormous head of water tries to flow through the narrowest gap on offer: Cook Strait.
Inside that strait the current can run at four knots in mid-channel and much faster through specific squeezes. Inter-island ferries time their crossings around it. The same logic explains why French Pass, the narrow strait between D’Urville Island and the South Island mainland, has tidal currents that touch eight knots at peak springs — among the fastest tidal flows anywhere in the world. Boats wait for slack water to transit it.
Spring and neap, and the king tide cycle
The Moon’s effect is strongest when it’s aligned with the Sun (at new moon and full moon), producing spring tides with the largest range — high tides higher than usual, low tides lower than usual. When the Moon is at first quarter or last quarter, the Sun’s gravity is pulling at right angles to the Moon’s, and we get neap tides with the smallest range. The cycle from spring to neap and back takes about two weeks — the map’s stats panel shows where in that cycle we are right now.
Around four times a year, the Moon’s distance from Earth (perigee) coincides with the spring cycle to produce king tides — the largest predicted tides of the year. These are normal astronomical events, not storms; but combined with low pressure or onshore wind they can produce significant coastal flooding in vulnerable areas like Wellington’s Petone foreshore, Tauranga’s Pāpāmoa, Christchurch’s South New Brighton and parts of the Coromandel. As global sea levels continue to rise, what were once king tides will increasingly become routine flood events.
Tidal-stream hotspots in New Zealand
Cook Strait — Up to four knots in mid-strait at spring tides, much higher in places like Karori Rip near Wellington Harbour mouth. Direction reverses every six hours. The eddy patterns are well-known to ferry crews and fishers.
French Pass — Between Te Aumiti / French Pass village and the western tip of D’Urville Island. Currents up to eight knots, with treacherous standing waves at peak flow. Most yacht traffic transits at slack water; the Cook Strait Cruising Club publishes an annual transit timing guide.
Kaipara Heads — The Kaipara Harbour is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere; the Northern Wairoa River and several others flow into it, and all that water has to exit through a narrow bar between South Head and the Tasman. Tidal currents at the bar combine with ocean swell to produce some of the most dangerous breaking water on the New Zealand coast — historically the cause of many shipwrecks.
Manukau Heads — Similar in geometry to Kaipara: a vast harbour draining through a narrow throat where ocean swell breaks across the bar. The 1863 wreck of HMS Orpheus on this bar killed 189 people, the largest single-event maritime loss of life in New Zealand history. The bar has been mapped and dredged repeatedly since but remains hazardous.
Foveaux Strait — Between the South Island and Stewart Island. Current flows east at flooding tide and west at ebb, and combines with prevailing southwesterly weather to produce notoriously rough conditions. The Bluff–Oban ferry route is timed around the worst of it.
Tide times in Auckland
Auckland sits on two harbours with very different tides. The Waitematā on the east coast follows the Hauraki Gulf, with two high tides and two low tides roughly every 24 hours and a spring range of about three metres. Onehunga on the Manukau, only a few kilometres away on the west coast, runs around three hours out of step because its water comes in off the Tasman rather than the Pacific — worth remembering if you launch a boat from one side and fish the other. Open Auckland in the map for the next high and low, or switch to Onehunga (Manukau) to see the west-coast timing.
Tide times in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui
Tauranga Harbour drains through a single entrance between Mount Maunganui and Matakana Island, so the tide runs hard through the cut and the timing at the beach is close to the port figure. It is a standard semidiurnal pattern with a spring range of roughly a metre and a half to two metres. Open Tauranga in the map for the next high and low tide, which also covers Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa.
Tide times in Wellington
Wellington has one of the smallest tidal ranges in the country, often under a metre, because it sits close to an amphidromic point in Cook Strait where the incoming and outgoing tides largely cancel out. The current through the strait, by contrast, is one of the strongest in New Zealand, because Wellington and Nelson are about six hours out of phase. Open Wellington in the map for the harbour tide times.
Tide times in Christchurch and Lyttelton
Christchurch’s tides are measured at Lyttelton, the port over the hill in the drowned crater of Banks Peninsula. The range is around two metres at springs, and the same timing carries across to the city beaches at New Brighton and Sumner within a few minutes. Open Lyttelton in the map for Christchurch tide times.
Tide times in Dunedin and Otago Heads
Dunedin’s tides are referenced to Otago Heads at the mouth of Otago Harbour. High water reaches the heads first and then takes some time to travel up the long, narrow harbour to the city wharves, so the further up the harbour you are, the later the tide turns. Open Otago Heads in the map for Dunedin tide times.
Tide times at other New Zealand ports
The map covers 28 ports around the coast. Tap any one for its next high and low, or jump straight to a deep link — Bay of Islands, Whangārei, Thames, Whitianga, Raglan, New Plymouth, Whanganui, Gisborne, Napier, Nelson, Picton, Kaikōura, Timaru, Greymouth, Bluff, Stewart Island and Milford Sound.
Frequently asked questions
When is high tide in Auckland today?
Open the map and tap Auckland, or use the Auckland deep link, to see the next high and low tide with a 24-hour curve. Auckland’s east coast gets roughly two high tides a day, about 12 hours and 25 minutes apart, so they shift a little under an hour later each day.
How are tide times calculated?
Tides are predictions, not live measurements. They come from the known cycles of the Moon and Sun acting on each stretch of coast, which is why they can be worked out years in advance. If you want the full detail of how the bulge of high water moves around the country, see How tides actually work.
Why do tide times differ between nearby ports?
The high-water bulge sweeps around New Zealand rather than arriving everywhere at once, so a port on the east coast and one on the west can be hours apart even when they are close together on the map. Auckland and Onehunga are the classic example, sitting only a few kilometres apart but around three hours out of step.
Can I use this map for boating or navigation?
No. This is an ambient picture of the tide, not a navigation tool. For boating, fishing safety and any on-water decision, use the official LINZ tide tables and tidal-stream atlases.
About this data
NZ Tide Pulse shows tide predictions for 28 ports and the tidal-current direction at five of the country’s strongest tidal-stream channels, animated to the current time. The figures are predictions derived from standard tidal cycles and are meant as a quick, visual read of the coast, not for navigation. For official tide tables and tidal-stream information, use Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). If a port looks wrong, tell us in the comments.