Dukhan Beach 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 07:00 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 Asia/Qatar local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Last spring tide on Tue 19 May (range 1.6m). Next neap on Wed 20 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.

Dukhan is Qatar's west coast oil town, sitting on the shore where Qatar's first oil was discovered in 1939. The beach here is one of the least visited on the Qatar Peninsula — most people don't cross the country to reach it — but it rewards those who make the effort with something the east coast beaches can't offer: wide shallow water over white sand and shell, virtually no crowds outside of local weekday use, and a view west toward Saudi Arabia with the Gulf catching the afternoon light in a way that no east-facing beach can replicate. The western Gulf coast has different tidal character from Qatar's east coast. The orientation and proximity to the Saudi coast create a slightly more complex tidal pattern, but the fundamental character is semi-diurnal with spring ranges of approximately 1.0-1.5 m. The water over Dukhan's coastal shelf is very shallow — the pearl-diving banks that once drew fishermen here are notoriously flat and sandy, and the water depth rarely exceeds 5-8 m within several kilometres offshore. This shallowness means the water heats to extreme temperatures in summer (32-34°C) and cools relatively fast in winter compared to deeper coastal sites. The pearl banks offshore from Dukhan were among the most productive in the Gulf during the traditional pearl era. The town's relationship with pearl diving runs deep through its history — well before the oil derricks arrived, boats from Dukhan worked the banks that stretched south toward Bahrain and east toward the Qatar coast. The Qatar National Museum in Doha documents this history extensively, but Dukhan's beach itself is the physical connection to those grounds, the same shallow water and sandy bottom where generations of divers held their breath and descended. For fishing, the west coast's shallow banks are productive for seabream, hammour, and Gulf shrimp. Local boats work the offshore areas early morning and evening, and the catch feeds both the local community and the supply chain toward Doha. There are no formal fishing charters at Dukhan, but the town has fishing families who occasionally take visitors offshore through informal arrangements made at the harbour. The open beach is useful for shore fishing at dusk when king mackerel sometimes run close to the shore chasing bait across the shallows. Dukhan town itself is the base for Qatar Petroleum's industrial infrastructure, which gives it a functional rather than scenic character inland. The beach, however, is the genuine appeal — a long, relatively natural strip of west-facing sand that catches the sunset properly. The low angle of winter light over the western Gulf in December and January, the Saudi coast hazy on the horizon, and the shallow turquoise water extending for kilometres in front of you: this is what the Gulf coast looked like before the resort developments arrived, and Dukhan preserves it by accident of geography and industrial geography rather than by design. The west coast road from Dukhan south toward the tip of the peninsula passes through territory that most visitors to Qatar never see: flat sabkha salt flats, occasional rocky outcrops, and the Gulf visible to the west at various points. This is not scenic driving in the conventional sense, but the emptiness has its own quality. The few fishing boats moored along this coast and the occasional camel visible on the coastal plain remind you that this landscape was in use long before Qatar Petroleum built its infrastructure here, and will be here long after. The pearl bank geology offshore from Dukhan — flat sandy bottom at 3-8 m, ideal for diving without equipment — is the same geography that pearl divers worked for centuries and that oil prospectors drilled through in the late 1930s when they found something worth rather more than oysters beneath the sand.