Live beach & sargassum conditions for your guests
For hotels, resorts, tour operators and travel media across the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Central America.
Show guests the real picture
Today's sargassum level, water temperature, waves, UV and a 7-day outlook for your beach, on your own site.
Fewer surprises, fewer complaints
Guests who know what to expect book with confidence and cancel less. Show them the seasonal pattern and your cleanup program.
Independent, trusted data
Built from satellite and open weather/ocean models, never edited by advertisers. Scores are the same for everyone.
Free to embed
One line of HTML. No key, no account, no tracking cookies. Just keep the “Powered by Veabird” link.
Show guests your beach is clear
The free Veabird beach badge puts today's grade for your beach on your own site, linked to your Veabird page. On days the data backs it up, it reads Clear beach · Veabird verified.
- When it says “Clear beach”: today grades A- or better (a Bluebird day) with very low or low seaweed, at least 4 of the 5 days we grade (today and the next 4) do too, and no tropical storm is nearby. It is checked every 6 hours against the same forecast as your resort page.
- The rest of the time it shows today's real grade, good or bad, with the seaweed level. If our forecast isn't fresh, it shows no grade rather than an old one.
- Never for sale. No resort can pay for, request or keep the “clear” state, and scores never change for money, sponsorship or partnership. That is why guests can trust it.
- Free. A small image or script, no key, no cookies. The badge links to your resort's Veabird page; please keep the link.
Price your rooms for the nights ahead
See which nights will fill around your resort, from Veabird's crowd forecast for your beach, holidays and events nearby, lowered when heavy sargassum or a storm is coming. Get a suggested % up or down for each night, set your own limits and room types, and download it for your PMS or channel manager. Free.
Data available for every resort
- Beach day grade (A+ to F: A = bluebird day, B good, C fair, D poor, F stay home) for today and 15 days ahead
- Sargassum score and level (very low → very high), seasonal baseline, beach-after-cleanup estimate and confidence
- Water temperature, wave height and period, swell, ocean current
- Air temperature, feels-like, rain chance, cloud, wind, UV, heat index, thunderstorm chance
- Crowd estimates for the resort, city and airport, with holidays and events
- Rip current and tropical-storm risk; NWS alerts for the US, Puerto Rico and USVI
- Regional cleanup and barrier programs, travel advisories, area highlights, nearest airports
- Climate outlook out to a year (6-year ERA5 normals per location)
Free JSON API
Static JSON files, no key. Base URL:
https://veabird.com/data/feed/
| Endpoint | Contents |
|---|---|
index.json | Every resort: id, name, city, region, lat, lon, url, today (score, sargassum, sargassumScore, tmaxF, sstF, waveFt, uv, crowd) and 16-day arrays in next16. |
resorts/<id>.json | Full detail: meta, resort, cleanup, safety, tourism, current (live weather, marine, alerts), days[] (today + 15 days: date, score, weather, ocean, sargassum, crowds, safety, holidays) and outlook (days 16–365 as columns). |
sargassum.json | The learned sargassum model: per-coast-segment climatology and skill. |
Units: °F, feet, inches, mph. Updates: every 6 hours. CORS: served with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, so you can fetch from any browser page. Resort ids match the URLs on our resort pages. Please cache on your side rather than polling more than hourly.
const BASE = "https://veabird.com/data/feed/"; const r = await fetch(BASE + "resorts/tulum.json").then((res) => res.json()); const today = r.days[0]; console.log(today.score.total, today.sargassum.label, today.ocean.sstF); // Show "Data: Veabird" with a link to https://veabird.com/resort/tulum/
How the sargassum forecast works
- Satellite history. Years of Alternative Floating Algae Index (AFAI) sargassum detections, gridded to coastline segments near each resort. Satellite sargassum data: USF Optical Oceanography Lab (Sargassum Watch System) via NOAA AOML.
- Drift features. Nearby offshore sargassum is advected toward the coast using ocean currents plus about 2% wind drift (windage), together with onshore-wind exposure for each beach's facing direction.
- Held-out-year skill. The model is trained on some years and scored on years it has never seen, so reported skill reflects real forecasting ability, not memorization.
- Calibration. Scores are calibrated to observed landing frequencies, then blended with the published seasonal cycle of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt where data are thin. Confidence falls with lead time.
Current skill scores are published in skill.json. The satellite history the model learns from, month by month for every stretch of coast, is an open dataset: Caribbean sargassum dataset (CSV and JSON, CC BY 4.0).
Attribution & terms
- Free for any website or app, including commercial ones, with a visible “Data: Veabird” credit linking to the resort's Veabird page (the widget includes this).
- No warranty. Forecasts are estimates and can be wrong. Coordinates are approximate.
- Not for safety-critical use. Always follow lifeguards, local flags and official advisories.
- Commercial options: SLA-backed feed, custom locations (your exact beach), white-label widget. Get in touch. Satellite sargassum data and the sargassum dataset stay free for everyone; we never charge for them.
Talk to us
Want your beach added, a custom location or a white-label feed?
Or email hello@veabird.com.
Advertising and partnerships: see the media kit.