Apple Watch 10 is here for Snorkeling. I took it to swim

As my shadow drifted towards it, the burgundy octopus retreated under a rock, sucking itself into a dark crevice. As I floated and peered through my diving mask, a wave hit the back of my head and I realized I had lost track of time again while chatting with the marine life along Maui’s south shore. I turned my face to look at my Apple Watch and it told me that I had been in the water for about 30 minutes without a break.

Previously, I would have needed an Apple Watch Ultra to use the Oceanic Plus app, which is designed to track scuba sessions — my colleague Jesse Orrall tested that feature back in 2022. Then in the fall came the Apple Watch 10, and with it, the Oceanic Plus compatibility, including an update aimed at surfing.

Shortly after the Series 10 was released, I was headed to the surfing hot spot of Hawaii, so I knew I had to take it for a spin.

As hobbies go, snorkeling isn’t something I enjoy very often, because my closest option is the cold North Sea. Facing the coasts of Scotland, Norway and other Northern European countries, the North Sea is not the most attractive or interesting body of water to dip your face into.

But I’ve been lucky over the years to go snorkeling in some great spots, making it one of my favorite vacation activities. I’ve swum with turtles in Indonesia and rays, sharks and dolphins in Australia, and I’ve explored the brilliant technicolor coral gardens of the Red Sea.

During my trip to Hawaii, snorkeling was the focus of my time at sea. As usual I had my mask and snorkel with me, and a GoPro to film the giant sea turtles that Maui is famous for. I had a small dry bag to store my valuables, which was clipped to my waist, and on my wrist was the Apple Watch Series 10.

Since the launch of the first Apple Watch, 10 years ago, I have championed the gadget as a travel tool. The ease of looking down at your travel details when your hands are full; the ability to monitor work and sleep as you change time zones; and staying connected while on the go means it really comes into its own when you’re headed on vacation or a business trip. Along with my phone, headphones, GoPro and Kindle, it’s the one piece of technology I can’t imagine going without these days.

The Series 10 has a “swim proof” design with a water resistance rating of 50 meters. The watch detects when it has been submerged in water, which causes a water lock. When you get out of the water, you can hold the digital crown to drain the water from the grills on both sides of the watch.

Also new to this iteration of the Apple Watch is a depth sensor app that tells you the temperature of the water and how long you’ve been underwater. Integrated with the Apple Watch tides app, it’s ready to go snorkeling right out of the box.

For people who take snorkeling more seriously, the Oceanic Plus app is an extra investment at $2/£2 per month. With that, you get a GPS activity map of all snorkeling sessions and a logbook, which will automatically import any photos or videos from your iPhone, with color correction.

At sea with Apple Watch

Even before I got in the water, the Oceanic Plus app was helpful in directing me to popular snorkeling spots with the help of its heat map. I also used the built-in tides app on the Apple Watch to get a better understanding of the ocean conditions before starting a snorkeling session.

As I submerged the watch, along with me, in the ocean, the water lock would activate and I could launch the Oceanic Plus app, or the free Apple Watch Depth app would appear on the watch face. Both would start a timer and let me know how deep I was (not too deep; I was snorkeling after all), and the temperature of the water.

The timer was perhaps the most useful feature of skiing with the Apple Watch. It’s very easy to lose track of time when diving, and the timer allowed me to monitor how long I had been swimming and helped me stay aware of sea conditions.

As I swam, the Oceanic Plus app collected data about my distance and route, in the background. When I got back to shore – after grabbing the digital crown to send the salty liquid from my Apple Watch – I could add to my logbook more details for future reference, about visibility, surface condition and current, and notes about which fish I had seen (with a little help from in the Ocean ID app feature).

Because I had a GoPro with me, I didn’t use my iPhone to take pictures or videos during my snorkeling. If I had, they would have been automatically logged in my snorkel log because of their time stamps.

A good snorkeling companion

I enjoyed it and appreciated the extra detail I got from snorkeling with the Apple Watch, but I found the simple built-in depth app to be a very useful feature. The Oceanic Plus app proved useful when looking back at each swim, as well as creating a record of what I had seen.

When people asked me where I saw a turtle, for example, I couldn’t easily describe or point to places in my maps app, but also show them the route I was swimming. If I am ever lucky enough to return to Maui, I will look forward to revisiting the other places where I saw the most exciting marine life and compare and contrast the results.

There is no doubt that I would get more out of the Oceanic Plus app if I were snorkeling regularly. If I lived near a decent snorkel spot, I would enjoy tracking the different fish and animals I saw at different times and use the trend data to learn about their behavior and deepen my connection with my local underwater ecosystem.

For a snorkeler on vacation, I wouldn’t declare the Apple Watch an essential item. As Jesse demonstrated in his dive test with the Apple Watch Ultra, the Oceanic Plus app really shines when you use it for scuba instead of snorkeling — and that remains true even with the improved snorkeling features.

That said, it’s good to know that if you own the Apple Watch Series 10, or the Ultra model, it’s wearable and usable for snorkeling. Oceanic Plus snorkeling subscriptions are expensive, but if you’re like most people, the built-in Depth app feature on the Apple Watch will give you a whole lot of easily accessible, real-time data while navigating the corals. searching for fishy friends.