Bigeye Tuna - Night
ProIn development: the after-dark bigeye map, built around bigeye rising into shallower water at night; in daylight, use Bigeye Tuna - Day. Its score is a 0 to 100 habitat match. Only a score of 50 and above is painted.
Updates daily; forecast in 3-hour steps
More detail
This species map is in development.
What you see. Choose the species from the Bite Intel button along the bottom of the map. The map is colored from dark blue at 50, through green and yellow, to dark red at 90 and above. On the website the legend shows that color bar and an Opacity slider that fades the map. Switch on Compare species to show more than one species at a time, each in its own color, brighter where the match is higher.
What goes into it. There are two bigeye maps, Bigeye Tuna - Day and Bigeye Tuna - Night. Both weigh surface temperature, temperature and salinity breaks, where currents squeeze together, eddy edges, how deep the surface water is mixed, water color and its edges, bottom depth, and how close a square is to bottom structure such as seamounts, each set for where the fish are at that time of day. The day map also weighs how deep the cold water starts and oxygen.
How to use it. Let the map narrow a big piece of water to a few areas, then check those areas on the temperature, water-color and current layers. To see what built the score at one spot, click the map on the website; on the iPhone, put the crosshair on the spot and tap the fish-scale button beside the map. A panel lists each condition with its reading and a rating from Poor to Ideal.
Who makes it. RipIQ builds this map itself, mostly from the HYCOM (U.S. Navy model) forecast and the charted bottom depth, so cloud never blanks it.
Its limits. The map shows water that looks like bigeye water, not fish. It has eight frames a day, three hours apart, about a week ahead, with about 5 nautical miles of detail, so read areas, not single squares. The map covers the Gulf of America, the East Coast and Baja, wherever the species list for your region offers it.
The numbers
| How often it updates | Eight frames a day, three hours apart |
| How fresh it usually is | From a forecast run started between one and four days ago |
| How detailed it is | About 5 nautical miles of real detail in the water, finer on the bottom |
| Where it covers | The Gulf of America, the East Coast and Baja, in each region whose species list offers it |
| Observed or modeled | Modeled |
| What you see on screen | Squares colored from dark blue at 50, through green and yellow, to dark red at 90 and above. Under 50 nothing is painted |
Source: computed by RipIQ from the HYCOM and Copernicus model layers (temperature, salinity, currents, fronts, thermocline, chlorophyll edges) and seafloor depth.