Bluewater IQ Data credits

The maps are built from public ocean, weather and satellite data. These are the sources, with the attribution each licence asks for. Our posts and videos crop the map's own credit line, so it lives here too.

Map, coastline and boundaries

• Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Basemap tiles by Protomaps. Some protected-area boundaries come from OpenStreetMap too.
• Country outlines: Natural Earth-derived polygons (world-geojson).
• Departments and provinces: geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0; Runfola et al., 2020, PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231866).

Depth

• Bathymetry: GMRT, the Global Multi-Resolution Topography synthesis (Ryan et al., 2009, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst. 10, Q03014, doi:10.1029/2008GC002332), with GEBCO-backed fill where there is no multibeam survey.

Ocean

• Sea-surface temperature: JPL MUR SST v4.1 via NOAA CoastWatch ERDDAP; a second SST layer from Open-Meteo Marine.
• Chlorophyll and water colour: NOAA VIIRS (SNPP) and NASA PACE OCI.
• Subsurface temperature, sea level (altimetry), dissolved oxygen, water clarity (Kd490), and the wave forecast's swell and wind-sea partitions: E.U. Copernicus Marine Service. Generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information.
• Surface currents: Open-Meteo Marine, and Météo-France SMOC (tides and wave drift) from the Copernicus Marine Service.
• Sea-level anomaly at the equator (Kelvin waves): NOAA CoastWatch blended altimetry. ENSO index: NOAA CPC (ONI).

Weather, tides and rivers

• Weather, wind, tides and the marine forecast: Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo blends national weather models, including ECMWF, NOAA GFS and DWD ICON.
• Animated wind: NOAA NCEP GFS (public domain), via UCAR THREDDS.
• Air quality: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, via Open-Meteo. Generated using Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information 2026.
• River flow: GloFAS, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, via the Open-Meteo Flood API. Contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026.
• Rain radar: RainViewer.
• Rain from space (NASA GPM IMERG) and storm clouds (NOAA GOES-East): NASA GIBS. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).

Satellite reads of beaches and sandbars

• Sandbar and shoreline reads, and beach imagery: Copernicus Sentinel-2 (via Earth Search on AWS) and Sentinel-1 radar (via the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem). Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2022–2026.

Our videos

• The 3D beach fly-throughs also use the Copernicus DEM. © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.

What we add

The heat maps, surf ratings, break lines, bite times and the wave model are Bluewater IQ's own work, built from the data above. The sources are not responsible for our interpretation of it. Bluewater IQ is a planning tool, not a navigation aid.