Apple Ultra Watch and App: The Future of Dive Management?

If you have an Apple Watch Ultra, with its tough titanium casing (the cost is $799), you can now download the Oceanic Pelagic+ app from Apple for $80, turning your watch into a full-fledged dive computer. If you use an Oceanic computer, this is a perfect pair. So you don't lose your watch on a dive, Apple includes an alternative flexible elastomer strap.

You can pre-plan your dive with an Apple Ultra in conjunction with your iPhone, although the watch alone allows for no-deco-stop planning. In the dive settings, you can add alarms for dive time, maximum depth, low remaining no-deco time, and water temperature that's too cold. The iPhone adds weather information, water temperature, and tidal information up to three days in advance using a drop pin on the map of the dive site, via the app.

The watch has a sensor on its back, so it knows you're wearing it, but if you strap it over a wet suit sleeve, you might need to enter a passcode. You need to set the Oceanic app to launch automatically upon immersion or you could find yourself at depth staring at a record of your previous dive. To be sure, you can press the orange button at the side to confirm you're starting a dive. Once you submerge, the touch screen should disable, so you may need to surface to launch scuba mode manually, so it's important to check all is well before you have descended too far. It's not 100 percent effective but a little hit-and-miss.

Four alternative screens can be called up during a dive. The first shows dive time, minimum ascent time, and water temperature; the second shows maximum depth, ascent rate, and battery level; the third is a compass; and the fourth shows dive parameters you might have previously set, like nitrox mix or degree of conservatism. You need to scroll past these screens with the digital crown to see them all, and gloves might make it difficult. The compass heading is set similarly and blue arrows at either side of the display tell you whether to veer right or left as you go.

During a dive, it displays your remaining no-stop time, but red warnings pop up and briefly obscure that info in doing so. It signals alarms and notifications with an attention-grabbing buzz that you feel on your wrist, even through your neoprene suit.

Notifications that are not alarms, such as a target depth or safety stop, pop up to fill the screen in yellow but shrink back after a few seconds (assuming you took notice). The safety stop countdown is sensitive to depth but carries on where it left off should you inadvertently sink below the stop depth for a moment.

The Apple Watch Ultra communicates the same information as a basic Oceanic computer. iPhone enthusiasts can enjoy surface intervals by adding information to their digital dive log. The Watch Ultra battery is rechargeable and copes with a day's diving.

As we've indicated before, every diver should carry two computers with identical algorithms, using one as a backup. The Apple Watch Ultra with Pelagic+ pairs nicely with another similar Oceanic computer but may differ from those of other computers. Indeed, it's the future of dive management.

- Undercurrent