Suva, Fiji 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 16:00 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 Pacific/Fiji local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Sun 17 May (range 1.7m). Last neap on Sat 16 May. 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.

Suva is the working capital of Fiji, sitting on the south-eastern coast of Viti Levu, the country's largest island, at the head of Suva Harbour where the Tamavua and Wailoku rivers feed into the bay. Fiji is the most populous and economically significant of the South Pacific Melanesian nations, sitting between Vanuatu to the west and Tonga to the east in a chain of about 330 islands of which roughly a third are inhabited. The country's coastline is dominated by fringing and barrier reefs that ring almost every island, and the Coral Coast that runs west from Suva along the southern shoreline of Viti Levu toward Pacific Harbour and Sigatoka is one of the great surf and dive coasts of the region. The tide here is a moderate mixed semidiurnal signal: mean range at the Suva harbour gauge is about 1.0 metre, climbing past 1.4 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping near 0.5 on neaps. Two highs and two lows of unequal size each day, with the asymmetry varying through the lunar month. The Suva Harbour basin connects to the open Pacific through the narrow Suva Passage between Nukulau Reef and the southern reef edge, and tidal currents through the passage run sharper than the height swing implies, with working pilots timing the larger commercial vessel approaches around the slack on the rising flood. The defining seasonal force is the cyclone calendar. The South Pacific cyclone season runs from November through April with peak activity from January through March, and tropical cyclones in the South Pacific tend to track along the latitude band between 10 and 25 degrees south, putting Fiji at the centre of the long-term climatology. Cyclone Winston in February 2016 (Category 5, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere with sustained winds exceeding 250 kilometres per hour) struck the Northern Division and the eastern islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni hardest, killing 44 people and reshaping the agricultural calendar across the country; Suva was on the southern flank of the storm and took less direct damage but the surge and rainfall events were severe. The Coral Coast surf passes at Frigates, Wilkes, and Restaurants along the southern reef edge open up on certain tide stages and ring the reef shelf at low water for the working dive operations. The Suva fish market at the harbour reads the boat-return calendar for the inshore tuna and reef-fish fleet, the inter-island ferry to Levuka on Ovalau and the Yasawa group reads the table for the Suva passage windows, and the working container terminal at the Suva commercial port reads the table for dredged-channel approach timing. The Fiji Meteorological Service publishes the authoritative tide tables; Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page.