Diamond Harbour tide times

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived.

Model-derived from a global ocean grid. Useful indication; expect about ±45 minutes on average vs. a local harmonic gauge, individual stations vary widely. See /methodology for per-region detail. Not for navigation.

Conditions as of 09:30 local time. Refreshes daily.

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived. · Not for navigation.

The angler tradition for major/minor fishing windows: major ≈3-hour windows around moon transit and opposition; minor ≈2-hour windows around moonrise and moonset. Times are Asia/Kolkata local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Last spring tide on Sat 02 May (range 4.4m). Next neap on Fri 08 May.

Spring tides cluster around new and full moons (biggest swings). Neap tides land on quarter moons (smallest swings). See the spring tide and neap tide glossary entries for the why.

Diamond Harbour sits on the western bank of the Hooghly River, 50 kilometres south of Kolkata, at the point where the river channel begins its final approach to the Bay of Bengal. Here the Hooghly is wide — 1 to 2 km across at most states of the tide — and the tidal signal from the ocean is fully present. Mean spring range at Diamond Harbour is approximately 4 to 5 m. That is a macrotidal river, one that rises and falls by more than the height of a two-storey building twice each day, and everything that happens on this stretch of water — ferry crossings, fishing, boat anchoring, riverside access — is organised around those cycles. Diamond Harbour was a pilot station for the Kolkata Port Trust for much of the British colonial period, the last point where incoming vessels from the Bay of Bengal took on river pilots who knew the Hooghly's shoals and bends well enough to navigate the 80-kilometre passage upriver to the docks. The channel is notoriously difficult: the Hooghly carries enormous sediment loads from the Ganga and its tributaries, the shoals shift seasonally, and tidal currents in the narrower sections run at several knots. Getting a loaded vessel from Diamond Harbour to Kolkata was, and remains, a tide-dependent operation. Pilots still work the river; the Port Trust maintains continuous dredging to keep the navigation channel open. The tidal bore — called a bore tide locally, sometimes Bane in historical records — forms in the Hooghly on large spring tides. A bore is a wave of tidal advance that moves upstream as a distinct leading edge rather than a gradual water-level rise; the Hooghly bore is not as dramatic as the Severn Bore in England or the bore on the Qiantang River in China, but it is real. At certain spring tides, particularly after new and full moons when the range peaks, a detectable wave advances up the river against the current, audible before it arrives and strong enough to move moored boats. Local fishers know the bore by the sound of it. The bore is most pronounced in the narrowing reaches upstream of Diamond Harbour, between Falta and Garden Reach; at Diamond Harbour itself the water-level rise is more gradual but the velocity of the incoming tide is still striking. The Sundarbans lie to the east and southeast, beginning at the point where the Hooghly delta system fragments into dozens of distributary channels separated by densely vegetated islands. This mangrove system — roughly 10,000 square kilometres split between India and Bangladesh — is the functional continuation of the tidal regime that runs through Diamond Harbour. The same spring tide that raises the Hooghly 4 to 5 m at Diamond Harbour pushes into the Sundarbans creek network, flushing the mangroves twice daily, carrying nutrients and sediment that sustain the extraordinary productivity of the system: Royal Bengal tigers, estuarine crocodiles, Irrawaddy dolphins, spawning grounds for the Hilsa shad that is both economically and culturally central to Bengali cuisine. The Hilsa — Tenualosa ilisha — is worth understanding in the context of tidal fishing here. It is the most commercially important fish in West Bengal and Bangladesh, an anadromous species that migrates from the Bay of Bengal into the river system to spawn. The Hooghly between Diamond Harbour and the sea is one of its key spawning migration routes, and the fishing communities along the river time their nets to the tide: gill nets set on the ebb current, hauled on the flood. The timing of the tide and the presence of the bore are practical knowledge passed through fishing communities over generations. Ferry traffic on the Hooghly at Diamond Harbour connects the western bank at Diamond Harbour town to Maheshtala and Kalaghat on the eastern shore. The ferries are flat-bottomed wooden boats, and the landing ghats — the stone steps leading down to the water — are calibrated to the tidal range. At high tide, the top step might be awash; at low tide, the bottom of the ghat is exposed several metres below the river surface. Passengers embark and disembark at whatever level the river is at when the ferry touches the ghat, and the ferryman reads the current to decide how to approach. Navigation on the Hooghly without understanding the tidal current is not viable. Access to the Sundarbans for tourism, including boat tours to see tigers and crocodiles from the river channels, is managed through entry permits at Sajnekhali and Canning. These tours operate on tidal windows — the channels through the mangrove forest are navigable at high water and may become too shallow to pass at low water. The wildlife is also more active at certain tidal states: tigers are most often seen on intertidal banks exposed at low water, where they move between islands. The tidal rhythm and the wildlife sighting opportunity are directly connected. A note on access and safety: the Sundarbans is not a safe area for independent exploration. The combination of Bengal tiger and saltwater crocodile habitat, dense mangrove terrain with no clear navigation landmarks, and the tidal current in the creek system creates conditions where disorientation and dangerous wildlife encounters are both realistic risks. All access to the core zones should be with licensed Sundarbans guides through regulated entry points. Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model — model-derived, not a local gauge, accurate typically within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 m on height. On a coast with a 4 to 5 m spring range, those height errors are proportionally modest. The India Meteorological Department and the Kolkata Port Trust maintain the authoritative Hooghly tide gauge data. For vessel navigation on the Hooghly — where tidal current and channel conditions are operationally critical — the Port Trust's official predictions and pilot service apply.