New platform combines dive-site discovery, dive shops, marine life, digital logging, certification cards and a personal Dive Passport
After opening its doors to divers through its public beta, Divemates has officially launched for iOS and Android, bringing a comprehensive suite of tools for discovering, planning, logging and sharing dives into one free application.
Described by its founder as the “AllTrails for diving,” Divemates is designed to become a single home for a diver’s underwater life – from researching a dive site and finding a local operator to recording the dive, tracking marine life and carrying certification credentials digitally.
The platform’s global catalogue includes nearly 10,000 dive sites, more than 16,000 dive shops and guides, and close to 12,000 marine species across more than 140 countries.
Divers can explore individual sites, see dive statistics and discover the marine life being logged there, while dive-shop profiles provide information about operators, the sites they run and their professional staff. The live Divemates database already provides examples of this site- and operator-level information across destinations worldwide.
Bring Your Entire Dive History With You
For divers with years, or decades of diving behind them, starting a new digital logbook can be one of the biggest barriers to switching platforms.
Divemates aims to remove that problem with its Import and Connect feature.
Divers can bring their existing dive history into the app in just a few taps, importing records from other apps and logbooks as well as common file formats.
That means divers don’t have to choose between their existing history and a new digital platform. Instead, their previous dives can become part of their Divemates history, allowing them to start with their complete record rather than beginning again with Dive Number One.
Your Certifications in Your Pocket
Divemates also goes beyond dive logging with its Digital eCard.
Certification cards and dive insurance can be stored inside the app, making them available whenever they are needed, even when the diver is offline.
For dive operators, the system is designed to make certification verification easier too. Dive shops can scan a diver’s digital eCard to verify certification details in seconds, eliminating the need to search through a wallet or dig out a physical plastic card.
The digital credentials can also be added to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, giving divers another quick way to access their cards in a format familiar to travellers who already use digital boarding passes and tickets.
A Global Dive Directory
At the centre of Divemates is its worldwide catalogue of dive sites and operators.
With nearly 10,000 dive sites and 16,000+ dive shops and guides, the app is designed to help divers move from “Where should I dive?” to “Who should I dive with?” in the same place.
Site pages can include ratings, conditions, site type, depth information, recent sightings, common species and statistics generated from dives logged through the platform.
The system also highlights the divers and staff connected to particular locations, adding a community element to what might otherwise be a conventional dive-site directory.
Discover the Marine Life
Divemates includes a catalogue of close to 12,000 marine species, with species names attributed to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).
Marine life is integrated into the diving experience rather than treated as a separate database. Divers can record what they saw, while site information can show the species that other divers commonly encounter there.
Over time, this creates a picture of what divers are actually seeing at individual dive sites.
Log Every Dive – Even Without Signal
The Divemates logbook is designed to work fully offline, making it particularly useful for liveaboards, remote destinations and dives where mobile coverage simply isn’t available.
Divers can record their dives without an internet connection, with information synchronising once they are back online.
As the logbook grows, it becomes a personal Dive Passport, recording achievements such as total dives, bottom time, maximum depth and countries explored.
Rather than simply storing individual dive records, the Passport gives divers a way to see their entire diving history and the destinations, depths and experiences that have accumulated over time.
Built by a Diver
Divemates was created by lifelong diver David Elsonbaty, who has been building iOS applications since 2012. His first app was featured by Apple, followed by software engineering roles at Twitter and Meta.
The idea for Divemates came from a recurring problem he experienced while travelling to dive.
“You cannot really know what a dive site is like, or which shop runs it, without endless searching,” Elsonbaty explains. “Divemates turns that guesswork into a plan, and every dive into a story worth sharing.”
The result is an application that attempts to connect the different parts of the diving journey rather than treating them as separate tasks.
More Than a Dive Logbook
With its official launch, Divemates now brings together:
- Nearly 10,000 dive sites
- 16,000+ dive shops and guides
- Close to 12,000 marine species
- Coverage across 140+ countries
- Dive-site ratings, conditions and statistics
- Marine-life sightings and species tracking
- A fully offline dive logbook
- Import and Connect for bringing existing dive histories into the platform
- A personal Dive Passport
- Digital eCards for certification and dive insurance
- Offline access to digital credentials
- Certification verification through shop scanning
- Support for Apple Wallet and Google Wallet
For divers, the appeal is straightforward: instead of maintaining a collection of dive logs, certification cards, destination research and operator information in different places, Divemates is attempting to put the entire diving journey in one pocket.
