Diveboard.com conducted a study between April and June 2011 comprising 2355 scuba divers of all skill levels (from beginners to Dive Instructors) about their experience with their current dive-logging solution.
The findings of the survey stressed three main points:
1) Most divers feel that logging is a chore that doesn’t add to the scuba experience
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Experienced scuba divers (Divemasters and above) stop logging their dives on average after 600 dives. Arthur Kerns, dive instructor at Dive Shack USA states: “After diving over and over again on the same spot with the same profile I kinda stopped logging that”.
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63.4% of beginners and intermediate scuba divers, and 68% of all divers, feel that logging is like doing “paperwork”
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for 88.2% of divers, “logging a dive does not help remembering it”,
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92% of those who still log their dives confess to be only recording the bare details – just enough for “proof of experience”.
Scuba divers demand an effortless customised logging experience where divers can easily record the pictures, discoveries and memories of each of their dives.
2) Only 4.2% of scuba divers occasionally share their dive data with the scientific community
While organizations such as DAN (Diver’s Alert Network http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/) put a lot of effort into spreading the word about the importance of sharing dive profiles and medical data to make diving safer, few divers are currently doing it.
Scuba divers demand the option to automatically share their diving data, including encountered species, with the global scientific community, helping form an evolving, accurate model of the marine world.
3) 79.3% of scuba divers regret “not being able to share easily their passion for scuba on the Internet”
Despite the number of forums, there’s no easy way to collect all your scuba memories in a single location … and share them over the Internet.
Scuba divers demand to be part of a world-wide network who can easily share their experiences, knowledge and love of scuba diving across all their favourite social networks, independent of platform or location, to improve the scuba experience for beginners and experts alike.
After an open beta phase to refine their service, and after listening to the suggestions of countless scuba divers and beta testers, Diveboard.com is announcing today the grand opening to the general public, of the first online scuba logbook where logging is fun and easy and allows divers to keep their diving memories safe and vivid forever.
Diveboard is built around three main principles:
1) Make Logging easy, fun and educational: turn logging into an essential part of the scuba experience
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Upload your dive profiles straight from your dive computer. Simply install the Diveboard navigator plugin (Mac/PC/Linux) and you’ll be able to upload your profiles in the blink of an eye.
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Identify the fish you’ve seen. Working hand in hand with EOL (Encyclopedia of Life – http://www.eol.org) and IOBIS (Ocean Biographic Information System – http://www.iobis.org), Diveboard has created a dedicated tool, letting you easily record all the species you’ve encountered during a dive and find species by dive location.
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Enrich your logbook with pictures, videos and maps and make your memories vivid forever.
2) Share with the scientific community: crowdsourcing marine and medical data
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With scuba diving becoming more and more popular, Diveboard.com is also a way to aggregate scientific data and share it with the scientific community. As a user you can choose for your data to be anonymous or for you be cited as its owner (or simply not to share your data). If you choose to share,
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species occurrence data will be shared with the IOBIS network (Ocean Biographic Information System – http://www.iobis.org), serving universities worldwide, as well as other global zoological networks such as GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility – http://www.gbif.org) and Worms (World Register of Marine Species – http://www.marinespecies.org/)
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medical data will be shared with DAN (Diver’s Alert Network http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/)
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water temperature data will be shared with divers4oceanography.org
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Your observations and experiences will aid in the understanding and maintenance of the environment by providing a global network of scientists with valuable, accurate information in an almost real-time manner.
3) Share with your friends and fellow divers: your dives are everywhere you are – on the Cloud
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Publish your dives on your favourite places such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter… and share your love for scuba with your friends and family and the scuba community at large.
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Check out your fellow divers’ experiences in any given location and be properly prepared before you hit the water.
About Diveboard.com: http://www.diveboard.com is your free online scuba logbook. Built by a team of scuba fans, Diveboard.com is a free online service letting you save and share your scuba memories in a fun and educational way. Diveboard helps scuba divers get involved with the scientific community and contribute to watch the evolution of the marine ecosystem as well as making diving safer. Diveboard enables scuba divers, through fellow divers’ past experiences, to discover new spots and species and to plan their next scuba trips effectively.
