Grande Rivière, Trinidad 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 00:00 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/Port of Spain local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Last spring tide on Mon 18 May (range 1.0m). Next neap on Fri 22 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.

Grande Rivière is at the end of a road that crosses the Northern Range mountains from the Toco Highway, descending through forest to a river mouth on the Atlantic coast of Trinidad's northeast corner. The village has a small guesthouse community, a community nature tour guide association, and a beach that has been documented as one of the highest-density leatherback sea turtle nesting sites in the world. The nesting season runs from March through August; the peak is May and June, when counts of 200 to 500 leatherback females in a single night have been recorded. A leatherback female weighs 300 to 600 kg, nests between 60 and 90 eggs per clutch, and may return to the same beach every 10 days through a season of three to seven clutches. The hatchlings emerge 60 to 65 days after laying, meaning the beach from June through September produces regular hatchling emergences — groups of 65 to 85 hatchlings scrambling across the sand to the surf in the dark. The Grande Rivière Nature Tour Guide Association manages beach access at night during nesting season; guided access is the only way to observe nesting turtles on the beach after dark. The fee funds local rangers who monitor the nests for poaching and predation. The Grande Rivière river empties across the western end of the beach; the river mouth position shifts with seasonal rainfall and with storm flooding of the Northern Range catchment. The turbid plume from the river mouth reduces snorkelling visibility for several hundred metres to the west of the river. The Atlantic facing northeast coast of Trinidad has a meaningfully different tidal regime from the Gulf of Paria west coast. The Gulf of Paria is a nearly enclosed basin sheltered by Venezuela's Paria Peninsula; its tidal range is compressed to under 0.5 metres. The northeast coast, open to the Atlantic, runs a spring range of approximately 1.0 to 1.5 metres — the largest tidal variation on Trinidad's coastline. The wider range at Grande Rivière means the beach width changes substantially with the tide: a spring low exposes 25 to 35 metres more beach than the high water state, and the lower beach section below mid-tide is the primary turtle nesting zone. The shore break at Grande Rivière is heavy on any swell day — the Atlantic arrives with full period and the river-mouth bar amplifies the break. Swimming is not recommended here; the beach is for turtle observation, photography, and walking. Shore anglers fish from the river mouth bar at dawn on the ebb tide, when the baitfish moving on the current draw kingfish and jacks to the surface. All tide predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine gridded model — accuracy within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height.