Fitzgerald Marine Reserve Tide Chart 2026: Low Tide Schedule, Best Days, and the 8 AM Catch

The lowest tide you can stand in at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve during posted hours in 2026 is −1.85 ft MLLW on Wednesday, December 23, at 4:22 PM, computed from NOAA's Pillar Point Harbor station 9414131. The year's deepest daylight low (−1.90 ft, December 24) bottoms out ten minutes after the reserve's 5 PM winter close. The tide chart for the rest of September and all of October is below — September's remaining story is a dusk run, September 27–30: Monday the 28th's −0.11 ft low at 6:42 PM is the month's deepest you can stand in before the 7 PM close, and Sunday the 27th (+0.19 ft, 5:57 PM) is the weekend version. From late October the deep lows return as afternoon events that mostly fit the posted hours.

When is the lowest tide at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in 2026?

Tidewindow computes windows for the Moss Beach reef from the nearest NOAA prediction station, Pillar Point Harbor (9414131) in Half Moon Bay. Here are the eight deepest daylight lows of 2026, ranked by depth, with one column the tide chart never shows you: whether the moment of low water falls inside the reserve's posted hours.

Computed 2026-09-05 from NOAA station 9414131 predictions; the July rows are history, kept for the record. Hours per San Mateo County Parks. (One number moved a hundredth since our August check: December 23 now predicts −1.85 ft, not −1.86.)

Two of eight. That is the whole story of this reserve in one column. San Mateo County Parks opens Fitzgerald at 8:00 AM every day of the year, holidays included, and closes it on a seasonal schedule: 8:00 PM through Labor Day, then down in steps — 7:00 PM after Labor Day, 6:00 PM from October 12, and 5:00 PM from November 2 through February.

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve tide chart: October 2026 (and the rest of September)

The chart below is the complete high-and-low schedule for station 9414131 from September 17 through October 31 — every predicted extreme, not just the pool-friendly lows. Times are local; heights are feet above MLLW, so a negative low means water below the average lowest tide line. Whether a given low is low enough is its own question — How Low Does the Tide Need to Be for Tide Pools? tests the common −0.5 ft rule against the 2026 predictions.

Computed 2026-09-17 from NOAA station 9414131 predictions. Read it with the reserve's clock in mind. September's early-month minus tides bottomed out before dawn, hours ahead of the 8 AM gate; what's left of the month is the dusk run at its end, with the low right around sunset and the 7 PM close. October's deep water arrives in the last week, and later each evening: −0.52 ft at 4:59 PM on Sunday the 25th, −0.93 ft at 5:42 PM on the 26th, −1.15 ft at 6:29 PM on the 27th, and the month's deepest, −1.17 ft at 7:21 PM on Wednesday the 28th — the last two after the 6 PM close that starts October 12. Halloween's −0.44 ft low lands at 10:26 PM, a night tide.

Live day-by-day charts, with the daylight-window math attached, are on this station's monthly calendar pages — September 2026 and October 2026 — and the station page always shows the next seven days of highs and lows. The rest of the year compresses to this:

Computed 2026-09-17 (December's count was 15 in our September 5 check; one shallow interval no longer qualifies after a pipeline correction — see the methodology). Notice the pattern: in every remaining month, the deepest low and the highest high land on the same day. Those are the new- and full-moon alignments that drive the season's king tides — the 2026–2027 king tide calendar covers the high end of the same curve.

Why do the gate hours beat the tide table here?

Look at where the deep lows land. July's cluster bottomed out between 4:45 and 5:33 AM — dawn events, hours before the gate. The November and December cluster bottoms out between 4:22 and 6:12 PM, right as the winter close arrives. The moon does not consult the county.

The days that thread the needle are worth circling. December 23 gives you the window from 1:30 PM until the 5:00 PM close — about 3.5 hours — with the −1.85 ft low itself at 4:22 PM. November 24 is nearly as good: −1.64 ft at 4:31 PM, with roughly 3 h 15 min of usable window after 1:45 PM.

What's left in 2026, and how much of it fits inside the gates?

Here is every day worth planning around for the rest of 2026, chronological, with the only column that matters at this reserve: how much of the tide window survives the posted hours.

Computed 2026-09-05 from NOAA station 9414131 predictions; hours per the San Mateo County Parks seasonal schedule. Scores (0–100) weigh tide depth and daylight only — they don't know about gates, which is why October 27 scores a 65 while handing its best half-hour to the closed reserve.

The gate story flips as the year ends. In summer the reserve's 8 AM open ate the dawn minus tides whole; from late October the good lows are afternoon events, and the seasonal close becomes the deadline instead. The near-term pick is Sunday, September 27 — a +0.19 ft low at 5:57 PM on a weekend, the low itself an hour before the 7 PM close — with Monday the 28th the month's only minus tide you can stand in before the gate shuts. Then the November 22–24 and December 20–23 runs are the season's real prize: three-to-five-hour windows with the deep low inside posted hours, peaking at −1.85 ft on December 23. If a date here doesn't fit your calendar, the Pillar Point reef guide covers the unfenced side of the same tide, and the California tide pools comparison sets Fitzgerald's hours problem beside Cabrillo's.

By the monthly count, 38 daylight minus tides remain in 2026 from September 17: September's 3 (the dusk run of the 28th–30th), then the recovery — 9 in October, 12 in November, and 14 in December.

What will you actually see out there?

The recent observation record near this station is still mostly a nudibranch parade. In the last 60 days, six of the seven most-logged species within 5 km of station 9414131 were sea slugs: spotted dorid (38 observations), opalescent nudibranch (31), hammerhead doto (17), Hopkins' rose nudibranch (17), stubby dendronotid (15), and Hilton's aeolid (14) — with the gumboot chiton (26) breaking the sweep at third place. Tallied 2026-09-05 by the Tidewindow pipeline.

Look, don't touch. County regulations are explicit: observe marine life "by looking only," don't handle animals or place them in containers even briefly, don't remove shells, vegetation, rocks, or marine life, and watch your step around barnacles, anemones, and mussels. The reserve sits within the Montara State Marine Reserve, where the take of all living marine resources is prohibited — no fishing anywhere in the reserve. Bringing kids? Tidepooling With Kids turns rules like these into a packing checklist and a way to pick windows children can actually work.

What are the hours, rules, and parking?

Per San Mateo County Parks and the Friends of Fitzgerald Marine Reserve:

• Hours: opens 8:00 AM daily year-round; closes 8:00 PM April–August and through Labor Day, then 7:00 PM after Labor Day, 6:00 PM from October 12, and 5:00 PM from November 2 through February. Hours can change for weather or emergencies.
• Cost: none — no charge for individual admission or parking.
• Parking: the lot is on Lake Street between California and Nevada Streets; the reserve address is 200 Nevada Ave, Moss Beach.
• Groups: fewer than 15 people, no reservation needed; 15 or more require a reservation (no fee).
• Dogs: not allowed at the tidepools; permitted on the Coastal Trail only.

On safety, the Friends of Fitzgerald Marine Reserve put it plainly: "never turn your back on the ocean when you are out on the rocks – a big wave can come along any time!" Their rule of thumb matches our arrive-by math — pools are workable for at least an hour either side of the low, stretching to two or more on negative tides. The seasonal version of that timing question — dawn lows in summer, afternoon lows from October on — is the subject of The Best Time to Go Tide Pooling.

How are these windows computed?

Station 9414131's published harmonic constituents are thin by NOAA standards — the agency's constituent notes describe them as the average of three 29-day analyses, with the two seasonal constituents borrowed from San Francisco (station 9414290). Tidewindow takes NOAA's predicted highs and lows for the station and reconstructs the curve between them by cosine interpolation, so window edges (rounded to 5 minutes) are estimates; the high and low heights and times in the charts above are NOAA's own. These are astronomical predictions, not observations — the full formula set is on the methodology page.

To turn any of these dates into a plan, the Tide Window Finder gives arrive-by times for every upcoming window, and the Trip Picker filters for weekends — useful at a reserve where only 2 of the year's 8 deepest daylight lows fit inside the gates.