Spending time on planning too quickly becomes a nice and important part of the hobby. What is more exciting than dreaming about new adventures and projects over a cup of coffee on a stormy evening? In this article, we highlight the apps and websites we prefer when planning trips.
By Simen Wilberg
Diving meet
Dycketreff is an iPhone application that provides you with tide, weather and depth charts for your favorite dive sites. Dive meetings make it easy to plan for and meet at the right time for good diving experiences.
Dykketreff.no Dive meeting on the App Store
Map
Trip planning often starts with a good map service. If you are going to explore a new area, it is pure gold to familiarize yourself with a good map. Where is the sandy bottom, how deep is it, how far do you have to swim and where can you expect to find backwaters and currents.
If you are on a computer , Gule Sider's map service is recommended. There you can vary between aerial photos, sea maps and road maps. Here you can find both driving and swimming routes. You also get nice tools such as a distance measurer, coordinates and a shareable link to relevant map sections. It can be good during these chat times when you want to share an area with a dive buddy.
Extract from the Yellow Pages . A good chart shows the way to shallows and available depths.
Extract from the Yellow Pages . A good aerial photograph indicates the bottom conditions well.
Navigation
On the way out to the best places, a navigation app on your phone is often gold , especially if you don't have a chart plotter on the boat. Here we recommend Navionics.
Download Navionics for Android
Download Navionics for iOS
Weather
The weather, and particularly wind, is an important factor in planning. Add the trip to places that are sheltered from the wind when it's windy. Explore the more windy areas when wind conditions permit.
Here are the well-known apps YR and TV 2 Vær glimmernde, Windy.com is also a perfect place to get an overview of the wind conditions.
Download Yr for Android
Download Yr for iOS
Download TV 2 Weather for Android
Download TV 2 Weather for iOS
Go to Windy.com
Tide
For those who hunt in tidal currents or areas where visibility is affected by the tide, it is important to hit with the tide. The vast majority of underwater hunters prefer to arrive in the area they are going to hunt a good while before high tide, so that they have the best view of power outages at high tide. Read more about this in the book Underwater hunting - Havets jegere
Download Tide for iOS
Download Tide for Android
Pictures from the Tidevann mobile app
Rescue
If you are freediving alone, or swimming at a distance from your diving friends, a rescue app can be good to have in case of an emergency. The rescue company's app "RS SafeTrx" is recommended for everyone who travels in or at sea. For those who want to take their phone with them in the buoy or raft, we recommend a waterproof mobile pouch .
Download RS SafeTrx for iOS
Download RS SafeTrx for Android
Photos from the Rescue Company's mobile app
Minimum size and species info
Familiarize yourself with which species are protected and which minimum size regulations apply before hunting starts. The Norwegian Fisheries Directorate's app " Recreational fishing app " gives you a full overview.
Download the Recreational Fishing App for Android
Download the Recreational Fishing App for iOS
Are you missing any apps or online services?
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Good trip!