The Apple Watch 10 is available for diving. I took him swimming

As my shadow drifted toward it, the burgundy octopus retreated under a rock, sucking itself into a dark crack. As I floated and looked down through my snorkeling mask, a wave crashed over the back of my head and I realized I had lost track of time again while communing with marine life off the south shore of Maui. I turned my face to check my Apple Watch and it told me I had been in the water for about 30 minutes without a break.

In the past, you needed an Apple Watch Ultra to take advantage of the Oceanic Plus app, which was designed to track diving sessions. My colleague Jesse Ural discovered this feature in 2022. Then the Apple Watch 10 arrived this fall, and with it compatibility with Oceanic Plus, including an update geared toward diving.

Shortly after Series 10 was released, I was scheduled to head to a diving hotspot in Hawaii, so I knew I had to take it for a spin.

As hobbies go, diving is not one of the activities I indulge in often, as the closest I get is the frozen North Sea. Coming to the shores of Scotland, Norway and other northern European countries, the North Sea is not the most attractive or interesting body of water you can immerse your face in.

But I’ve been lucky over the years to snorkel in some amazing spots, making it one of my favorite holiday activities. I’ve swum with turtles in Indonesia, with rays, sharks and dolphins in Australia, and explored the most dazzling, technicolor coral gardens in the Red Sea.

During my trip to Hawaii, snorkeling was the primary focus of my time at the beach. As usual, I had my mask and snorkel, as well as a GoPro camera to photograph the giant green sea turtles that Maui is famous for. I also had a small dry bag for my valuables, tied around my waist, and on my wrist was an Apple Watch Series 10.

Since the launch of the first Apple Watch, 10 years ago, I’ve championed it as a travel tool. Easy to glance at your travel details when your hands are full; the ability to closely monitor activity and sleep while moving across time zones; And just staying connected while you’re on the go means it actually happens when you head out on vacation or a business trip. Besides my phone, headphones, GoPro, and Kindle, it’s the one piece of technology I can’t imagine traveling without these days.

The Series 10 features a “swim-proof” design with a water resistance rating of up to 50 metres. The watch detects when it has been submerged, triggering the water lock. When out of the water, you can press and hold the digital crown to expel water from the grids on either side of the watch.

Also new to this iteration of the Apple Watch is a depth-sensing app that tells you the water temperature and how long you’ve been underwater. And with the Apple Watch Tide App, it’s ready to dive right out of the box.

For people who take their diving seriously, Oceanic Plus is an additional investment of $2/£2 per month. For that, you get a GPS activity map for each dive session and a log book, which will automatically import any photos or videos from your iPhone, with color correction.

At sea with Apple Watch

Even before I entered the water, the Oceanic Plus app was helpful in guiding me to popular dive sites with the help of its heat map. I also used the Apple Watch’s built-in tide app to understand more about the sea conditions before starting my snorkeling session.

While the watch is submerged in the sea, Water Lock will activate and I can either launch the Oceanic Plus app, or the free Apple Watch Depth app will appear on the watch face. They both start a timer and inform me of how deep the water is (not too deep; I was snorkeling after all), as well as the water temperature.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of diving with the Apple Watch is the timer. It’s very easy to lose track of time while snorkeling, and the timer allowed me to monitor how long I had been swimming and helped me stay aware of the sea conditions.

While I was swimming, the Oceanic Plus app collected data about my distance and my path in the background. When I returned to shore — after holding down the Digital Crown to send a salty liquid from my Apple Watch — I could add additional details to my log book for future reference, about visibility, surface and current conditions, as well as notes about what fish I saw (with A little help from the app’s Ambient ID feature).

Since I had a GoPro with me, I wasn’t using my iPhone to take photos or videos during the snorkeling session. If I had done so, they would have been automatically integrated into my dive log thanks to their timestamps.

Skilled diving buddy

I enjoyed and appreciated the additional data I gained from diving with the Apple Watch, but I found the simple built-in Depth app to be the most useful feature. The Oceanic Plus app proved useful when looking back on every swim, and for creating a record of what you saw where.

When people asked me where I’d seen turtles, for example, I could not only describe the locations or vaguely indicate them in my mapping app, but also show the exact route they swam. If I’m lucky enough to return to Maui, I will look to revisit some of the sites where I saw the most interesting marine life and compare and contrast the results.

There’s no doubt I’d get more out of Oceanic Plus if I snorkeled regularly. If I lived near a suitable diving spot, I would enjoy keeping track of the different fish and creatures I saw at different times and using trend data to learn about their behavior and deepen my connection to the local underwater ecosystem.

For the average diver on vacation, I wouldn’t declare the Apple Watch to be an essential accessory. As Jesse pointed out in his dive test with the Apple Watch Ultra, Oceanic Plus really shines when used for diving rather than snorkeling — and that remains true even with improvements to the snorkeling features.

However, it’s great to know that if you own an Apple Watch Series 10, or Ultra model, they are wearable and can be used for diving. An Oceanic Plus snorkeling subscription is very affordable, but if you’re like most people, the Apple Watch’s built-in Depth app feature will provide the perfect amount of real-time data that’s easy to access while you’re cruising the reef. Search for suspicious friends.