Sometimes, innovative applications are those that just take readily available information and package it in a way that serves a community of users. Such is the case of DiveSpots.com, a Web site that incorporates GPS data along with satellite images to provide divers with data on dive sites for planning expeditions.

“As a diver and a boater myself, I have been coordinating dive trips for a long, long time,” Raf Fiol, founder and managing editor of DiveSpots.com told Satellite News. “When you are venturing out into new areas, it’s always nice to be able to see exactly where you are diving. It is just one of those things that’s kind of borne out of a need and has grown into something pretty big.”

The service offers divers GPS coordinates for “interesting dive locations” such as ship wrecks and reefs. That data is then linked to Google’s satellite mapping service, allowing site members to see imagery of the sites.

“You can look at to find out where dive locations are,” Fiol said. “But with the ability to zoom in and zoom out using these satellite images, you can see exactly what channels you might need to navigate through to get to where you need to go to and things like that. It makes finding your dive location so much easier.”

While a satellite image of water may not sound useful, Fiol said it can offer a lot of information. “You can see where these dive locations are relative to a local marina,” he said. “The other thing is some of the dive locations are actual points of interest like a wreck near Pensacola, Fla., of the USS Massachusetts. It is in 15 feet of water, so you can see the wreck on the satellite image. There is a lot you can see from these images.

Prior to the launching of the site, which occurred about four months ago, one would need to consult readily available charts or books to get the necessary information about dive sites. “There are other ways of [getting information], such as chart plotters on your boat, which will give you topography of the area, but it doesn’t give you the visual satellite image with the aerial view of what that site looks like,” Fiol said.

–Gregory Twachtman

(Raf Fiol, DiveSpots.com, 305/439-2938)