Samantha & Julieann

Tides happen four times a day and it changes by one to three meters a day. The tides are caused by the gravitation pull of the moon and the sun on the earths surface, resulting in a rise of the water level in a another area.

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels made by the combined effects of the gravitational forces used by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth.

These are hopefully the tides for Whitianga which is only 33 minutes away from tairua.

Map of tairua and Whitianga

the moon has gravitational power, just like Earth does and the moon's gravitational force exerts a powerful pull on the oceans on both sides of our planet. This causes the oceans to bulge away from the Earth. The ocean facing the moon bulges toward the moon, while the ocean on the other side of the Earth bulges in the opposite direction this is caused by the Earth actually pulling away from the ocean and toward the moon. The rotation of the Earth, along with the moon's gravitational pull, causes ocean tides to change.

High tide happens when a body of water is facing the moon and the moon is pulling the water towards it with its gravity. High tide also occurs when an ocean is facing straight away from the moon, or when the moon is pulling the mass of the Earth away from the water. When the moon is neither overhead north on the opposite side of the Earth, a body of water settles back into low tide. This series of high tide and low tide usually happens twice a day everywhere on the planet, approximately every 12 hours and 25 minutes, as the Earth rotates and the moon orbit. Each tide lasts about six hours. So why aren't there tides in smaller bodies of water, like ponds or small lakes? It's because the entire body of water is the same distance from the moon throughout, so all the water experiences an equal gravitational pull.