Cox's Bazar tide times

Cox's Bazar is Bangladesh's primary domestic tourism destination and sits at the head of the world's longest unbroken natural sandy beach — a 120-kilometre continuous strand running south from Cox's Bazar town to Teknaf at the tip of the peninsula bordering Myanmar. The beach has no significant interruption: the drainage behind the beach ridge runs parallel rather than crossing it, no headlands divide it, and no significant reef system offshore breaks the Bay of Bengal fetch.

The tidal regime at Cox's Bazar is semidiurnal, with a large spring range of approximately 3.5 to 4.5 metres. The Bay of Bengal is a semi-enclosed sea whose basin geometry amplifies the tidal wave propagating northward from the Indian Ocean; by the time the tidal wave reaches the northern Bay of Bengal, it has been amplified substantially relative to its open-ocean amplitude. Spring tides expose the beach to its maximum width — 200 to 400 metres of wet sand at low water — and then cover it again over the following 6 hours. The beach at Cox's Bazar is fully functional as a beach only during the half of the tidal cycle that is below mid-tide; at high water springs, the water can reach the bamboo restaurant structures and shop fronts that line the upper beach in the most developed sections of the Laboni Beach area.

At low water springs — which occur twice daily in the early morning and early afternoon windows depending on the lunar phase — the exposed beach flat is extraordinary in its scale: 200 to 400 metres of wet, firm sand accessible for walking without the distraction of the tourism infrastructure higher up the beach. The flat is used by the fishing community for drying nets and hauling boats, by children playing cricket, and by beach-walkers who have discovered that low water is the moment to see the beach at its full extent. The horizon is wide and the firmness of the sand — wet and flat at low water — is better for walking than the soft, sloped upper beach.

Fishing is the original livelihood of the Cox's Bazar coastal community, before tourism reorientated the town's economy. Mechanised trawlers work the Bay of Bengal grounds in the dry season (November to April); small open boats and beach-launched nets target the inshore waters year-round. The harbour at Cox's Bazar, behind the beach's northern end near Fisherman's Wharf, handles the trawler fleet. The fish market at the harbour is active from dawn when the returning boats unload — hilsa (Tenualosa ilisha), the national fish of Bangladesh, is the most celebrated catch in season (July to November).

Cox's Bazar has developed rapidly as a domestic tourism destination, handling millions of visitors annually from Dhaka and Chittagong particularly during school holidays and dry-season weekends (November to March). The beach infrastructure is dense in the Laboni Beach area near the town centre and becomes progressively quieter moving south toward Inani and Teknaf. The south end of the beach, near Teknaf, is accessible only by local transport and has no large tourism infrastructure.

The hilsa fish season (July to November) and the beach-walking season (November to March) do not overlap neatly — the monsoon rains and rough Bay of Bengal sea conditions in July to October limit beach tourism. The driest and most comfortable months are November to February.

Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. Accuracy is typically within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height — model-derived, not from a local gauge. The local tide authority is the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), which publishes tidal predictions for Cox's Bazar and other Bay of Bengal reference stations.