Sources & methods

The map is a place to investigate habitat and compare forecast evidence. It does not predict catches, issue trip recommendations, or provide navigation and legal clearance.

New: species guidance, soft-bottom methods, NOAA chart, waves, tides, and comfort research

Mapped habitat

The 132 public targets come from 2008 surveys in three USGS releases, with a research depth and closure screen dated September 20, 2026. Survey depths use MLLW. Actual water depth changes with the tide.

• USGS Point Buchon release
• USGS Morro Bay release
• USGS Point Estero release

Survey credits: U.S. Geological Survey, California State University Monterey Bay Seafloor Mapping Lab, and University of California Center for Integrated Spatial Research. The inspected USGS releases identify these data as U.S. public domain. This does not assign the same rights to other providers’ data.

What A, B, and C mean

These letters rank the mapped terrain as a starting point for a sounder search. They do not rate catch probability, charter popularity, current fishing conditions, access, or safety. Of the 132 public targets, 35 are A, 74 are B, and 23 are C. Ranks use this public set and allow ties.

Each spot’s detail panel shows its measured values and points from all four factors:

Contributions increase proportionally up to each cap, then sum to a score rounded to a whole number. Relief and cover use the original 210-m local neighborhood; unevenness and habitat area use a 250-m radius. The analysis grid was 10 m (about 33 ft). These weights are a research heuristic, not a model validated against catches. Larger habitat area alone cannot earn an A, and the analysis does not measure individual boulder sizes or establish fish presence.

Points, shaded areas, and dashed lines

A point is a starting position to investigate. A “localized rocky target” describes a more concentrated mapped feature; a “reef area search target” describes a broader search patch. Neither promises a rock directly under the pin. Shaded areas show partial rough-habitat footprints, not complete reef boundaries or boulder outlines.

Dashed lines follow a strong axis of mapped structure. They suggest structure to work across, not a forecast of your drift or a boat route. Measure wind and current on the water, then choose a setup position that carries your rig across the structure. Either end may be appropriate. Sounder depth also changes with the tide; MLLW survey depths are not present water depths.

Cambria survey derivatives and older charter-ground annotations with unresolved reuse terms remain excluded from the public map.

Charter-reported grounds: boats, dates and approximate areas

The purple layer uses landing-reported trip facts published by SoCalFishReports: 173 daily pages from April 1 through September 20, 2026, with 601 Morro Bay / Avila Beach trip records. The operator Patriot Sportfishing links to the publisher network; Virg’s Landing credits SoCalFishReports for fish counts.

Two named vicinities appear on the map: Pecho Rock (11 trips, three boats) and Diablo (20 trips, Sunny Day). Morro Bay (14 trips, Fiesta and Rita G) remains research context only; its broad regional outline is no longer displayed. Each entry links every dated source. The sample is not a complete fleet or season census, and reporting frequency is not fishing effort or catch rate.

Reports publish neither GPS positions nor fishing depths. Our search windows are geographic interpretations: 1.25 nautical miles around the Pecho Rock landmark and two nautical miles around the Diablo Canyon reference. The displayed water is clipped to fully covered survey depths of 25–195 ft MLLW and buffered dated closures. These planning windows are not reported charter footprints; overlap with a reef candidate does not establish a visit.

The bathymetry comes from the already credited 2008 USGS surveys. Native minimum/maximum depths and coverage are aggregated to a 10 m grid. Closed-area exclusions receive a 505 m planning buffer, followed by 20 m erosion, a 12 m inward buffer and 8 m simplification. Only connected pieces of at least 0.1 km² remain; gaps are not bridged. The final rounded outlines were checked against all touched depth cells and exclusions. Present sounder depth changes with tide.

The CDFW Point Buchon page was checked September 21. The published 2025 edition of 33 CFR 165.1155 supplies the Diablo security-zone reference; a current eCFR direct read failed. The geometry is a dated screen, not live legal clearance.

344 trips have no ground label; 164 say only “Out Front.” Other named grounds fall outside Avila–Cambria, and nine multi-ground reports are not assigned to one location. Incidental salmon or halibut in a mixed trip does not turn the outline into a species-specific hotspot. This first charter layer is shown only for lingcod and rockfish.

Download the dated charter-report dataset for trip facts, source URLs, per-page retrieval times and hashes, counts, geometry construction and limitations. Only concise facts are republished; article text, photos, audio and raw HTML are not distributed. No charter AIS track, exact catch position, present fish abundance or catch-probability score is claimed.

New: historical commercial AIS cells and expanded charter audit ↗

Historical charter AIS: what we actually obtained

Raw archive samples were obtained, but no local sportfishing charter has been positively identified in them. The purple charter-report layer below uses published named grounds, not AIS. There is no AIS bonus in the terrain grades. The September 21, 2026 audit processed eleven complete nationwide UTC-day files: April 18, May 16, June 13, June 20, and June 24–30, 2026. The Avila–Cambria regional screen retained 37,202 records with 65 distinct vessel identifiers from 106,892,412 nationwide records. The public habitat map still ends at Point Estero.

June 24–30 provides one continuous seven-day block; the other dates are isolated samples. Complete processing of a file does not establish complete AIS reception or fleet coverage. UTC boundaries can split local trips. Exact normalized names were screened against the researched local fleet and produced no matches; changed, shortened, missing, or differently reported names can evade that screen. This limited sample cannot show that charters avoid any particular reef.

The free NOAA MarineCadastre archive is the source. At the audit’s retrieval time, its 2026 daily index listed broadcast dates through June 30; later file modification dates are not later vessel observations. This is the limit of that checked index, not every NOAA product. Credit NOAA Office for Coastal Management and the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center. The official archive documentation describes the available products and their reuse terms.

Before marking a repeated charter-visit area, we would first verify the vessel’s identity and sportfishing role, then examine full trips, reporting gaps, and repeated slow bouts over suitable legal habitat. The proposed research screen is at least three distinct dates and 15 minutes per bout, without a reporting gap over 10 minutes. It is not yet implemented or validated. Slow movement can also be waiting, sightseeing, or work; even repeated charter visits do not prove catches.

Download the dated AIS research summary for the exact daily source URLs, download times, record counts, integrity hashes, screened fleet names, and limitations. Raw vessel trajectories are not embedded in this app.

Marine forecasts

Open-Meteo provides access to ECMWF IFS and NOAA GFS wind forecasts. Its Marine API provides ECMWF WAM and NOAA GFS Wave. Open-Meteo is a delivery service, not an additional independent model. These are coarse offshore model samples, not observations at a specific rock or the Morro Bay entrance.

Forecast data are requested when you press “Load latest forecast.” Times are Pacific, winds are knots, heights are feet, and periods are seconds. Missing fields stay unavailable. Provider retrieval time is separate from model initialization. Latest-run metadata cannot tie each value in the rolling forecast to an immutable model run. Hourly output can include provider interpolation of lower-frequency model data.

Forecasts four to seven days away are provisional. The page displays numerical evidence, not an automated go/no-go score. You still need current advisories, buoy observations, harbor entrance conditions, visibility, daylight, and a charted departure-to-return plan. Wind and wave direction labels indicate where they come from; map arrows point downwind.

Open-Meteo data are available under CC BY 4.0; its free API is for noncommercial use and has service limits. Review the provider’s terms before operating a larger service.

Map and software

Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Standard tiles follow the OpenStreetMap tile policy; this app does not bulk-download them. The base map is not a nautical chart.

Leaflet 1.9.4 is bundled under its BSD 2-Clause license. SkipperCast’s original code and documentation use the SkipperCast Personal Use License: source available for personal recreation and learning. This is not an OSI open-source license. Third-party rights remain separate.

Current official checks

• NWS PZZ645 marine forecast
• NOAA / CDIP Diablo Canyon buoy 46215
• Morro Bay Harbor Department
• CDFW groundfish regulations
• CDFW protected areas

Project source on GitHub