Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires 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 01:00 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/Argentina/Buenos Aires local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Mon 18 May (range 2.1m). Last neap on Fri 15 May. Next neap on Thu 21 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.

Mar del Plata fronts the South Atlantic on Argentina's mid-latitude coast about 400 kilometres south of Buenos Aires, with the long sand-and-cliff shoreline running from Playa Grande in the north past the working harbour at Cabo Corrientes through Bristol and Varese to the surf coast at Playa Chica and on toward Punta Mogotes lighthouse at the southern edge. The city is the country's marquee summer-holiday destination — the Argentine equivalent of the Jersey Shore writ Atlantic — and the working port handles the largest fishing fleet in the country. The tide here is a moderate semidiurnal signal that the open South Atlantic delivers cleanly to the coast: mean range at the Mar del Plata harbour gauge is about 0.9 metres, climbing past 1.4 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping near 0.5 on neaps. The pattern is two highs and two lows of comparable size about twelve and a half hours apart. The defining seasonal force is wind. The pampero front sweeps up off Patagonia in autumn and winter, dropping temperature ten degrees in an afternoon and turning the open coast onshore. The deeper sudestada develops when a coastal low draws sustained south-east winds across the long fetch of the South Atlantic — the system can pile water against the Argentine coast and lift apparent water levels a metre or more above predicted, and the same wind builds the surf at Cabo Corrientes and Playa Grande into closeout shorebreak. Quequén further south at the Necochea river mouth amplifies surge events through its working port geometry. The sportfishing fleet running for striped marlin, dorado, and pejerrey out of the harbour, the working stevedores on the dock at the wharf, the alfajor-eating beach culture along the Bristol promenade, the surf community at Cabo Corrientes and Playa Chica, and the sea-lion colony that has made the harbour breakwater into Argentina's largest urban pinniped haul-out all read the table for different windows. Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page; for authoritative Argentine tide data, the Servicio de Hidrografía Naval of the Argentine Navy publishes the official tide tables and operates the harbour reference gauge.