Shandong

Shandong province fronts the Yellow Sea along its southern coast and the Bohai Sea along its northern coast, with the Shandong Peninsula — one of the most prominent landmasses on the Chinese coast — reaching east between the two basins. Qingdao sits on the southern coast of the peninsula where the Laoshan mountain range meets the sea; Yantai is the principal port on the northern Bohai coast; Weihai at the peninsula tip guards the entrance to the Bohai Strait. The tide here is semidiurnal across the peninsula, with mean ranges that vary significantly by location. At Qingdao on the Yellow Sea coast, mean range at the harbour gauge runs about 2.7 metres, with spring tides pushing toward 3.5 metres — a moderately large Yellow Sea signal. At Yantai on the Bohai coast the range is smaller, around 1.5 to 2.0 metres, because the Bohai Sea is a shallow semi-enclosed basin with its own resonance characteristics that partially damp the larger Yellow Sea tidal amplitude. The Yellow Sea is a broad, relatively shallow epicontinental sea between China and the Korean Peninsula, and its geometry amplifies the semidiurnal tide considerably compared to the open Pacific — the long fetch and the continental shelf bathymetry both contribute. The large spring-tide range at Qingdao exposes significant intertidal area on the beaches south of Zhanqiao Pier, including Number 1 Bathing Beach, and opens the tidepool zone along the Laoshan coastal granite during the lowest spring lows. The China Maritime Safety Administration and the National Marine Data and Information Service (NMDIS) publish the authoritative tide tables for Shandong ports. Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on TideTurtle pages for this region.