Find CO-OPS tide, water-level and current stations and NDBC buoys near a location, by name, or by station ID, returning a unified list with source, data capabilities, coordinates, and — for NDBC — the physical platform class. This is the required first step for resolving a place name, a coordinate pair, or a bare station number to the station IDs the data tools take: CO-OPS tide and water-level IDs are numeric (e.g. 9447130 for Seattle), CO-OPS current IDs are alphanumeric (e.g. ACT4176), and NDBC buoy IDs are 5-character alphanumeric codes (e.g. 46041).

Live marine conditions from an NDBC buoy: wave height, period and direction, wind speed, gust and direction, sea-surface temperature, air temperature, barometric pressure, and dew point. All values are SI units — wind in m/s, wave height in m, pressure in hPa, temperatures in °C — except TIDE, which is in feet, and VIS, in nautical miles, both rarely populated at offshore buoys; a numeric field is null when the buoy sensor did not report a value, which is normal offshore.

Observed ocean-current depth profile from an NDBC ADCP buoy — the most recent measurement of current speed and direction at each depth bin, returning depth in meters, direction in degrees true (the direction the current flows toward), and speed in cm/s. It is distinct from noaa_marine_get_currents, which returns CO-OPS tidal-current predictions of max flood, ebb and slack rather than these observed acoustic-Doppler measurements.

Tidal current predictions for a CO-OPS current station: max flood and ebb speeds, slack times, and the station's mean flood and ebb bearings. These are forecast predictions from CO-OPS, distinct from noaa_marine_get_current_profile, which returns NDBC observed ocean-current measurements binned by depth. The default MAX_SLACK interval is the practical planning view, showing when currents peak and when slack water occurs, and a 6-minute interval returns the continuous curve for detailed analysis, each row carrying its own flood/ebb/slack sense.