# Maps showing Current Direction and Strength



## grinner (May 15, 2008)

i am sure such things exist but wondering if anyone knows where a map of coastal regions showing tidal flow direction and strength can be purchased or if indeed such a resource exists online. was thinking this would be useful for fishing locations around reefs and also for reducing travelling times in bays etc

cheers pete


----------



## ArWeTherYet (Mar 25, 2007)

Here ya go Pete

http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/i ... ICS054.pdf

way too hard for me to understand, but a smart bloke like your self might make some sense of it all. ;-)

edit: actually its prety useless info. I think there are way too many variables when it come to current/ tide directions in Moreton Bay.


----------



## grinner (May 15, 2008)

paul, i just read that and it is certainly interesting that max flows thru the southport seaway are 4100 cubic metres of water per second which i believe is 4100 tons per second and that before construction it was only 5 % of this level. this must have an enormous effect on washing sediment in and out of the delta and so have an enormous effect on fishing.

secondly it was interesting that max flow was 4 to 5 hrs after the low (not 3 as i would have guessed) this sort of stuff if available say for the bay and around straddie moreton and fraser would be very useful me thinks.

certainly flows can be horrendous sometimes as anyone whos ever anchored up at the pin or amity in a big tideand tried to get the anchor up will agree .

thanks for the reference

and mr kraley i think youre right sydney harbour (and maybe port phillip bay) probably fill far more smoothly than moreton bay , the whitsundays, or around southern fraser where coastal bars and shallow reefs affect flow so much,

thanks boys


----------



## ArWeTherYet (Mar 25, 2007)

Sorry cant find much info Pete, only ocean currents and water temp charts. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/remotesensing/oceancurrents/

Here's some info on king tides you may be intrested in. http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/Home/Tides/King_tides/

Hay Point gets 7.14mtr king tides :shock: ......makes the 2.6mtr tide we had on the weekend look pretty ordinary. :shock:


----------



## grinner (May 15, 2008)

next king tide 14th decenber 10am, 
interesting that msq talk about the point that measuring currents would be very useful but is way more expensive than measuring sea level. got a bit excited when i saw they have *current" maps for sale . seems they mainly measure currents to help the big ships in and out of prot and with steerage etc for docking

the temp charts were a bit complicated though am interested in the significance of *thermoclyines" borders betwwen hot and cold water as apparently they hold a lot of marine life


----------



## Dodge (Oct 12, 2005)

Pete for tide info any where in Qld get hold of a copy of Tide Tables and Boating Safety Guide put out by Maritime Safety each year about $8-9.

It covers Brisbane and all the secondary ports, as well as showing the tidal curves which help you see what the flow rate will be like on any tide, and also moon and sun rise/set, and also gives small tide adjust guide into northern NSW

Best place to buy is one of the ship chandlers, this time of year Whitworths will have hundreds of copies for 2009...in my opinion beats anything a news agent sells


----------



## yakfly (Jun 8, 2006)

Gday Pete
I purchased a Mariners Atlas a few years back from Whitworths.Its a "Complete Compendium of Royal Australian Navy 
Charts" and is published by Crawfords.The edition you want is for Prot Stephens to Bundaberg.
It has the tidal and ocean stream current strengths drawn on as arrows with speed in knots ( 1 knot=1.8kmh)
Its expensive at about $62 to buy but has more detail than the Dept of Transport charts.


----------



## grinner (May 15, 2008)

thanks fellas, yakfly thats what im gunna get(though whitworths traditionally would overcharge their own mothers), a friend with a big fibreglass sea kayak has been paddling to moreton and back from wellington point. now ive been trying to tell him that if i catch the barge to dunwich and time it right , ill be able to sit in the rainbow channell and ill be launched all the way to southern moreton on a big ebbing tide. however the current strengths is what i really need

cheers pete


----------



## yakfly (Jun 8, 2006)

Pete
all I can find is a note that the current strength streams thru South passage Bar at 3-4.5 knots depending on wind and tides.


----------



## ArWeTherYet (Mar 25, 2007)

Ahh Pete you have a cunning plan. 8)

I think it would be great till you got to Amity Point.......then hold on. :shock: . That would have to be one of the most dangerous parts of the bay on a run out tide, especially if there were a North Easter wind and/or a northerly swell happening......... I dont know, I think if it were me I would take it wide, head out to the Rous Channel and then back in to Koooringal........But to be honest I'm not that familiar with that area and if you know what your doing go for......just hope the rudder pin doesn't break. :shock: :lol:

There is an easier way to get to Moreton, drive up to Fisherman Island and catch the barge to Tangalooma Wrecks (walk on walk off is about $60 with yak). The camp ground is only a couple of hundred yards up the beach and you get great protection from the eastern winds......then plenty of option for fishing.


----------



## paulo (Nov 1, 2007)

Pete have you tried WXTide32 (http://wxtide32.com/).
You download free and run it on your PC. Yo ucan localise it for where ever you are. The one thing it does do is give 5 minute (maybe 15 min, I havent used it for a while) interval graduated tide heights. Using a spreadsheet you can work out the relative tide speed by using rise\fall over time for each interval and plot it in an excel graph. Obviously there are many other factors.
I got all interested in trying to predict tide speed for rowing when I was right into it a few years back. It would show me the best time to row each day so that I rowed both ways with the tide, turning when it did and also highlighted the days I should just stay in bed cos it would be a really hard slog one or both ways. 
I got some pretty useful stuff from the csiro about tides and the likes as they had tide monitors all over the place when they were looking to build the green bridge to UQ. I even had a website up showing relative tide speeds for the Brisbane River and was pretty popular amongst Bne rowers. The website is long gone tho Im sure Id still have the code I wrote somewhere.
I can try and dig up the csiro info if you are interested.


----------



## paulo (Nov 1, 2007)

ArWeTherYet said:


> Ahh Pete you have a cunning plan. 8) I think it would be great till you got to Amity Point.......then hold on. :shock:


Yep I made the mistake of fishing Amity in a runout tide without doing my research. Leastways it was runout after I got out there.
That was one hard slog for over an hour to travel a few hundred metres and the only reason I didnt stop is cos I knew where Id end up.


----------



## grinner (May 15, 2008)

ah to both pauls ,yes thats very interesting about the amity to kooringal stretch. certainly that would require further thought. was there in the boat one day and when the tide ebbed and commenced the run in the whole thing turned from total havoc to a lake. obviously requires careful timing. i mainly like that southern end of moreton in the boat because it is very quiet(like horsehoe bay was 20 yrs ago) and looks like great yak country, as you point out access is the problem. i believe it may all be going green next year . and paul o thanks for that reference , will look that up, daughter is very rowing crazy and if the head of the river was still held on coro drive that info would have been helpful for choosing lanes .

a question have you fished the ? curtin atrificial reef and is that the one off bulwer . if so is it yakable. i havent been there for years and that was to drop off some divers. i would imagine its as crowded as hell on a weekend.

thanks again fellas pete


----------

