Live Sea & Ocean Webcams

Sea view webcams look out over open water, coastlines and the horizon. They are set up on hotels, harbour buildings, cliffs and promenades. The same view can show a calm sea one day and a storm-lashed shore the next.

The picture is a practical guide to the sea state. Whitecaps and spray mean a strong wind, a glassy surface means calm, and swell rolling in long, even lines often comes from storms far offshore. Ships, ferries and fishing boats crossing the frame give a sense of scale, and the colour of the water shifts with cloud, depth and the angle of the sun.

Whether the sun rises or sets over the water depends on which way the coast faces, and the time difference decides whether a distant sea is lit at all. At night most cameras show darkness broken only by lights on the shore or on passing ships; on clear nights a full moon can light up the water on its own.