The tides at Port Mansfield are so small (mean diurnal range of about 2 cm) that they are nearly lost in a noisy (meteorological) continuum. Nevertheless, a precise tidal analysis is necessary to provide the data for a determination of the elevation of mean high water, the boundary between private and state ownership in an oil‐producing area with a very flat terrain. Although response tidal analysis has been shown to be somewhat superior to classical harmonic analysis in various previous tests, no advantage is found in these circumstances of extremely low sighal‐to‐noise ratio.