Every upstream source behind a FishIntel report, what it feeds, how often it updates, and what each provider says about its own accuracy. Named, because a report you cannot check is worth nothing.
Dataset identifiers and cadences read from the running configuration and confirmed against the live services on 4 August 2026. How these layers are combined is on the methodology page.
Each entry below lists the source we prefer and the standbys behind it. A standby is only worth having if it fails for different reasons than the primary, so where we can, it sits on different infrastructure, from a different producer, reading a different instrument. A backup on the same host as its primary is not a backup, because the host is what fails.
When a standby answers instead of the primary, your report names the source that actually served the layer. It does not quietly substitute.
coastwatch.pfeg.noaa.gov, coastwatch.noaa.gov
Sea surface temperature, water color and chlorophyll, plankton productivity, salinity, geostrophic currents, sea level anomaly
Daily. The temperature analysis is a daily product that lands about a day behind, and the satellite salinity products run roughly two days behind for the daily grids and around six for the three day composite.
MUR SST newest observation read live at 2026-08-03 09:00 UTC and the VIIRS productivity grid at 2026-08-02 19:00 UTC, both fetched from the ERDDAP dataset metadata on 4 August 2026.
The data may be used and redistributed for free but is not intended for legal use, since it may contain inaccuracies. Neither the data Contributor, ERD, NOAA, nor the United States Government, nor any of their employees or contractors, makes any warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness, of this information.
The standard NOAA ERDDAP data licence, carried on every dataset above.
JPL MUR sea surface temperature also asks for this acknowledgement:
Please acknowledge the use of these data with the following statement: These data were provided by JPL under support by NASA MEaSUREs program.
The VIIRS productivity product also asks for this acknowledgement:
The project was supported by funding from the Portfolio Management Branch of NESDIS and NOAA CoastWatch
www.ndbc.noaa.gov
Live water temperature, air temperature, wind speed and direction, gusts, barometric pressure and trend, wave height, dominant and average wave period, dew point
Every 10 minutes for the reef line stations we read.
Observation rows read live on 4 August 2026 at 15:00, 14:50 and 14:40 UTC from a Keys reef station, a 10 minute step.
National Weather Service and NOAA information is in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise, and may be used without charge for any lawful purpose.
NDBC is part of the National Weather Service. Its data carries no licence fee and no required credit line, but we name it because you should know where a water temperature came from.
NOAA NDBC (National Data Buoy Center) →api.weather.gov
Active marine warnings and advisories, the coastal waters forecast text, and where the office publishes it, the approximate shoreward edge of the Gulf Stream given as distance and bearing from a named landmark
Alerts are issued as conditions require. The coastal waters forecast is reissued several times a day.
The Florida Keys coastal waters forecast read live on 4 August 2026 carried an issue time of 10:25 AM EDT that same day.
National Weather Service information is in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise, and may be used without charge for any lawful purpose. You also cannot present information of your own in a way that makes it appear to be official government information.
Which is why a FishIntel report attributes forecast and alert text to the National Weather Service and keeps its own analysis clearly separate from it. Always read the official forecast before you leave the dock.
NOAA National Weather Service →api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov
High and low water times and heights for the tide station nearest your zone, which feed the tide windows and the solunar periods
These are predictions rather than observations, computed in advance from the harmonic constituents for each station. We request the current day for your zone on each run.
Predictions for the Upper Matecumbe Key station fetched live on 4 August 2026 returned that day’s four high and low events.
NOAA CO-OPS requests that attribution be given whenever NOS material is reproduced and re-disseminated.
CO-OPS also notes that raw data are preliminary and do not meet the criteria and standards of official National Ocean Service data, and that tide table predictions are generally better than model forecasts for longer term planning.
NOAA CO-OPS (Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services) →cwcgom.aoml.noaa.gov, upwell.pfeg.noaa.gov
Floating algae detection, which drives the sargassum status in the report
The composites are cumulative over 7 days and are produced roughly daily.
Newest observation read live at 2026-08-03 12:00 UTC from the dataset metadata on 4 August 2026.
AFAI: Alternate Floating Algae Index (in reflectance units) to detect ocean surface features such as Sargassum, green macroalgae, and cyanobacteria. AFAI is estimated by Chuanmin Hu (USF). AFAI is sensitive to detect subtle ocean surface features, but it saturates under sun glint, clouds, or thick aerosols.
Produced by the Physical Oceanography Division at NOAA AOML from the University of South Florida algorithm. The saturation caveat in the provider’s own words is the reason the sargassum status can read as no detection on a bright, cloudy or hazy day.
NOAA AOML and the University of South Florida →stac.marine.copernicus.eu, s3.waw3-1.cloudferro.com
Standby sources for sea level anomaly, chlorophyll and salinity, on infrastructure independent of NOAA
The sea level and chlorophyll products publish daily. The salinity product publishes weekly, on Tuesdays, so it can legitimately reach around ten days old just before a release.
All three catalogue entries read live on 4 August 2026: sea level newest 2026-08-04, chlorophyll newest 2026-08-03, salinity newest 2026-07-29, each on a daily time step.
Generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information
This is the credit line Copernicus requires for value added products and derivative works, which is what a FishIntel report is. The service is provided under a worldwide, non exclusive, royalty free, perpetual licence to create and distribute derivative work.
Copernicus Marine Service (E.U.) →api.open-meteo.com, marine-api.open-meteo.com (free tier); customer-api.open-meteo.com, customer-marine-api.open-meteo.com (commercial, called instead whenever a host is configured with a paid key)
Wind speed and direction, gusts, air temperature, rain, cloud, visibility, barometric pressure and its trend, wave and swell height, period and direction
Hourly steps, refreshed as the underlying national weather models publish.
Both free-tier endpoints fetched live on 4 August 2026 returned 24 hourly steps for the day, in knots, feet and degrees Fahrenheit as requested.
API data are offered under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
This is Open-Meteo's credit line for the free, non-commercial tier, which is what any host with no key configured calls, dev included. A host with OPEN_METEO_API_KEY set calls the paid customer-api and customer-marine-api endpoints named above instead. Open-Meteo aggregates open forecasts published by national weather services, including the American GFS, the German ICON and the European ECMWF models.
Open-Meteo →FishIntel does not operate satellites, buoys or tide stations. Every number above is measured and published by the agencies named on this page, most of them funded by public money and free to anyone willing to do the work of reading them.
What we add is the reading: fetching each layer for your specific water, converting everything into the units a captain actually uses, checking how old each layer really is, analyzing all of them together rather than one at a time, and applying a working captain's calibration of which species are fished in which water. That is described in full on the methodology page.
None of the agencies above endorses FishIntel, and none of them has reviewed our analysis. Their disclaimers, quoted above, are theirs and apply to their data. The interpretation is ours, and the responsibility for it is ours.
A free account gets one full report for a zone you choose, built on any NOAA station in US waters.
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