Saint-Pierre 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 18:00 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 America/Martinique local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Saint-Pierre sits on the northwest coast of Martinique, facing the Caribbean in a wide bay backed by the forested slopes of Montagne Pelée. On 8 May 1902, the volcano discharged a pyroclastic surge that killed approximately 30,000 people — nearly the entire population of the town — in under three minutes. The town never fully recovered its former scale; the ruins of the pre-eruption theatre, hospital, and waterfront warehouses remain standing in the modern settlement as open-air monuments. The bay held 18 ships at anchor when the eruption hit. All 18 were sunk by the combination of the surge, superheated air, and subsequent tsunami-like wave. They remain on the bottom of Baie de Saint-Pierre and constitute one of the most concentrated collections of diveable wrecks in the world. The wrecks lie in 5–50 m of water across the bay, arranged across roughly 3 km of seafloor. The shallow wrecks — Tamaya (10–15 m), Gabrielle (12 m), Roraima (15–45 m) — are accessible to Open Water certified divers. The deeper wrecks, including the Pouyer-Quertier at 60 m, are technical dives. Visibility is typically 15–25 m in the dry season (January through June) and drops to 10–15 m during the rainy season (July–December) as river runoff and biological productivity cloud the water. Dive operators based at the Saint-Pierre waterfront — several running from the road adjacent to the ruins — offer guided wreck dives year-round. Tide at Saint-Pierre is mixed semidiurnal with a spring range of 0.3–0.4 m. Two unequal highs and two unequal lows occur each day, but the variation in water level is small enough that wreck dive depths are not meaningfully affected by tidal state. Tidal current in the bay is light — under 0.3 knots on most stages. Dive timing at Saint-Pierre is driven by boat schedule, visibility conditions, and diver certification level, not by the tide. The surface beach is black volcanic sand, the colour reflecting the Pelée origin of the material. The beach runs north from the town centre for roughly 800 m before the road curves inland toward Le Prêcheur. The black sand retains heat through the afternoon — significantly more than white coral sand beaches. Arrival before 09:00 or after 16:00 is more comfortable for extended beach time in the dry-season heat. The beach is narrow: at low spring tide (approximately 0.3 m above chart datum versus high at 0.6 m), the beach widens by less than 10 m given the steep underwater slope — the tidal range barely registers as a width change here. The ruins of the Saint-Pierre theatre (Théâtre de Saint-Pierre) stand one block from the waterfront. The structure was completed in 1786 and modelled partially on the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux; only the stone shell survived the 1902 eruption. The Musée Volcanologique Frank Perret on the main street documents the eruption with photographs, instruments, and artefacts recovered from the ruins, including clock faces stopped at the minute the surge hit — 07:52. The museum is the most useful preparatory stop before diving the wrecks: the artefacts give physical context to what divers encounter on the wreck sites. For anglers, the deep water close to shore at Saint-Pierre means productive bottom fishing from the jetty and from boats directly off the beach. The abrupt volcanic drop-off holds amberjack, snapper, and grouper year-round. Shore casting from the black-sand beach is less productive — the bottom is sand and rock rubble, not reef structure. Boat fishing from the bay, drifting the 20–40 m contour along the base of the volcanic slope, is the standard approach. Tide data for Saint-Pierre comes from the Open-Meteo Marine API, a gridded global ocean model. Timing accuracy is ±45 minutes, height accuracy ±0.2–0.3 m. SHOM (Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine) publishes the authoritative harmonic predictions for Martinique; Saint-Pierre predictions are secondary-corrected from the Le Robert reference station.