NOAA CO-OPS Tides & Currents Fishing Scraper

Scrapes high/low tide predictions from all 3,450 NOAA CO-OPS tide stations across the US — packaged for saltwater fishing, charter planning, and coastal activity scheduling.

Open NOAA public API — no API key required.

What it does

The actor fetches tide prediction data in two phases:

1. Station discovery — downloads the full NOAA CO-OPS station list (3,450 tide-prediction stations with lat/lon/state metadata)
2. Prediction fetch — retrieves hi/lo tide events per station for the requested date range

Each output record is one tide event (a single H or L) for a specific station and date. A typical day produces 3–4 events per station.

Use cases

• Saltwater fishing trip planning — identify optimal high/low tide windows for target species and locations
• Charter boat scheduling — feed tide windows into booking or planning apps
• Coastal tourism & recreation — beach, kayak, surf, clamming timing
• Marine research and data pipelines — bulk collection of historical or forecast tide data

Output fields

Field	Description
station_id	NOAA CO-OPS station ID (e.g. 8443970)
station_name	Station name (e.g. Boston, MA)
state	US state abbreviation
latitude	Station latitude (decimal degrees)
longitude	Station longitude (decimal degrees)
station_type	R (reference) or S (subordinate)
date	Prediction date (YYYY-MM-DD)
tide_event_time	Local time of this tide event (YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm)
tide_type	H (high tide) or L (low tide)
predicted_height_ft	Predicted water height in feet (MLLW datum)
datum	Always MLLW (Mean Lower Low Water)
source_url	NOAA API URL used to fetch this prediction
scraped_at	ISO 8601 timestamp of data collection

Input options

Option	Description	Default
maxItems	Maximum number of tide event records to collect	10
startDate	Start date in YYYYMMDD format (e.g. 20260601)	Today
endDate	End date in YYYYMMDD format	Same as startDate
stateFilter	Comma-separated state abbreviations to filter stations (e.g. FL,TX,CA)	All states
stationIds	Comma-separated NOAA station IDs (e.g. 8443970,8418150). Overrides stateFilter.	All stations

Examples

Get today's tides for a specific station (Boston Harbor):

{
  "stationIds": "8443970",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Get tides for all Florida stations for a week:

{
  "stateFilter": "FL",
  "startDate": "20260601",
  "endDate": "20260607",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Get today's tides across all US stations (up to 100 events):

{
  "maxItems": 100
}

Data source

Data comes from the NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) public API. The API is free and open — no authentication required. Coverage: 3,450 US tide-prediction stations spanning all coastal states and territories.

Predictions use the MLLW (Mean Lower Low Water) datum and are returned in local standard/daylight time (LST/LDT) for each station's timezone.

Notes

• Historical and future dates — the API supports both historical data and future predictions
• Subordinate stations (type S) use offsets from a nearby reference station; predictions are pre-computed by NOAA
• Large runs (all stations × multi-day range) will produce many records — set maxItems to control volume