Yeosu tide times

Yeosu sits on a peninsula at the southern tip of South Korea's Jeolla Province, facing the Korea Strait through a maze of 317 islands that make up Hallyeohaesang National Marine Park. The city hosted the 2012 World Expo; its waterfront is a mix of modern expo facilities, a traditional fish market at Jaseongdae, and the old downtown that climbs the hillside above the harbour. Odongdo Island, connected to the city by a 768-metre breakwater causeway, is the city's signature outdoor space — a camellia-forested islet ringed with coastal walking paths.

The tidal regime at Yeosu is semidiurnal with a spring range of approximately 1.2 m. This puts Yeosu firmly in the moderate-tidal category — enough range to affect beach access, boat launching, and fishing conditions, but without the dramatic flat exposure of the Yellow Sea coast further north. The higher high water reaches approximately 1.0 m above Chart Datum on springs; the lower low drops to approximately 0.2 m below. The diurnal inequality is moderate: the two daily highs typically differ by 0.1–0.2 m and the two lows differ by 0.1–0.3 m.

For boaters navigating the Hallyeohaesang island passages, the 1.2 m spring range is amplified in the narrows between islands into tidal currents of 1.5–3.0 knots. The passage between Yeosu and Dolsan Island runs at up to 2.5 knots at spring peak — irrelevant in a motor vessel above 10 knots but significant for kayakers calculating crossing time. The flood tide sets eastward through most passages on the south coast; the ebb sets westward. This has practical consequences for multi-day kayak routes through the national marine park: plan to run eastbound passages on the flood and westbound passages on the ebb.

For divers, the waters around Hallyeohaesang hold strong populations of sea bream, striped beakfish, and Korean rockfish in the rocky reef structure of the islands. Visibility is 5–10 m in the channel passages, improving to 10–15 m on the seaward side of the outer islands. The flood tide brings cleaner oceanic water from the Korea Strait into the inner passages; incoming-tide windows consistently produce better visibility than the ebb, which carries turbid bay water from the northeast.

For shore anglers, Yeosu's rocky coastline around Odongdo and the outer headlands of Dolsan Island are productive year-round. The ebb tide concentrates bream and bass at the points where current lines form off the headlands — the 90-minute window centred on the lower-low water is when baitfish stack in the current break and predators follow. Rock fishing from the seaward faces of the Odongdo causeway at night, during the 30 minutes either side of high water, is a local practice that produces black sea bream of 0.8–1.5 kg consistently from October through April.

For beach access, the sandy beaches in the Yeosu area are primarily on the outer islands — Geomundo, Sado, and the Odonddo waterfront have rocky shoreline with limited sand. Manseongri Black Sand Beach at the east end of the peninsula is the nearest accessible beach: volcanic black sand, 300 m long, with a 15–20 m width variation between low and high spring water. The water is 0.8–1.2 m deep 20 m from shore at mid-tide.

For photographers, Yeosu's sunrise view from Jinnamgwan — the famous wooden military hall on the hillside, the largest single-story wooden building in Korea — looks east over the harbour and island passages. The best light falls from 06:00 to 08:00, and a low-water morning exposes the harbour seabed around the anchored fishing vessels, giving a different foreground than the high-water mirror surface. The Odongdo camellia forest is best photographed from February to March when the trees are in full bloom — combine with a dawn low tide for the classic Yeosu shot.

All tide predictions for Yeosu come from the Open-Meteo Marine gridded model. Timing accuracy is ±45 minutes; height accuracy is ±0.3 m above Chart Datum.