North Sea (Germany)

The German North Sea coast and its outlying island, Helgoland, run a moderately large semidiurnal tide that reaches the open ocean before propagating onto the Wadden flats. Mean range at Helgoland harbour is about 2.4 metres, climbing close to 3.0 metres on spring tides. The island leads the Wadden coast slightly: the flood reaches Helgoland first, then pushes inshore to Cuxhaven, Husum, and the saltmarsh edge over the next hour. For anyone walking the cliff path past the Lummenfelsen, paddling the harbour, or working the intertidal flats around the Düne, the swing changes both access and what is on view. Lowest lows around new and full moons expose more of the inner shelf and the gannet-cliff base than the rest of the cycle does. Open-Meteo Marine provides the gridded predictions on this site — useful for planning, not navigation-grade. For authoritative German tide data, the BSH Pegel Helgoland is the reference gauge.