From Blog Action Day Action:

This year’s Blog Action Day topic is… Cli­mate Change. You as a scuba diver may not think that it may directly affect you. But there are a lot of small fac­tors involved, and as a whole, it may come to affect all of us in a big way.

We did some researches. We also bor­rowed ideas from this web­site, Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress. (Actual Arti­cle HERE) Based on the ideas, we put some thoughts out there.

You might won­der why the title of today’s post is “There’s an app for that.” Well, we’re shar­ing some “app” ideas and how scuba divers can uti­lize them to pro­tect our envi­ron­ment. Why mobile appli­ca­tion? We’re sure you might be aware of the decrease in the for­est, pol­lu­tion, car­bon diox­ide, cli­mate change… Not-so prefer­able cycle.

Seafood Watch by Moterey Bay Aquarium

Seafood Watch by Mon­terey Bay Aquar­ium (iPhone/Mobile Web Appli­ca­tion)
There have been many write-ups about Seafood Watch. We’ve read them all includ­ing app reviews on iTune App Store. We also know that there are handy pocket guides for Sushi avail­able by other orga­ni­za­tions. What’s so dif­fer­ent about this? First, it’s a mobile appli­ca­tion. It’ll go any­where with you even if you are in another coun­try on vaca­tion, try­ing that pop­u­lar seafood. Is it good for you? What you choose may make a big difference.

The Sushi guide nicely comes with the Japan­ese Name and the com­mon mar­ket name (quoted from Seafood Watch web­site), easy to read, and color-code lets you know which sushi would be your best bet while din­ing at your favorite restaurant.

There are 2 things involved in this small change — pro­tect­ing your ocean and beau­ti­ful sea crea­tures by being aware and prac­tic­ing to select sus­tain­able seafood.

Don’t have an iPhone? No prob­lem. Visit: http://mobile.seafoodwatch.org

And all in all, there’s an app for Seafood Choices, for Free.

Where by Where.com (Android/iPhone/BlackBerry/Palm Pre Application)

One of the rea­sons why you might go away for a day or on a vaca­tion is prob­a­bly because of that unknown adven­ture. To explore the local town, shop at local stores, or just walk around is always inter­est­ing. But where can you go? Ask­ing hotel employ­ees may be one thing but know­ing “where” to go is another.

Where can help you all that. On your next trip, take “Where” with you. You can find Local Weather, Gas Prices (and Gas Sta­tions), Traf­fic Infor­ma­tion, access to Yelp to find restau­rants (with phone num­bers and address) and reviews, and you can even find Star­bucks near you when you need a warm cup of tea after the dive.

How is this going to help divers to be sus­tain­able? Think of it this way. You can find the infor­ma­tion you need right in your hand at all time, no rea­son to drive around for hours try­ing to find places even if you are on a short dive trip.

This appli­ca­tion is a GPS mobile appli­ca­tion. This means you’ll have to have a satel­lite enabled ser­vice to use.

Dive­Lo­ca­tor (iPhone Application)

Orig­i­nally found the post on Scubaboard.com, Dive­Lo­ca­tor is an iPhone appli­ca­tion that pro­vides an infor­ma­tion on Dive Sites with a visual map (Google Map). Not only that, you can find the cur­rent con­di­tion in sur­round­ing area with 2 tide tables.

How is this going to help divers? No more Print-Out maps. This also would poten­tially decrease the amount of time you’d be dri­ving to find that hid­den dive site.

PS> They also are accept­ing dive site infor­ma­tion to grow their data­base. Click on the title above to visit the post from Scubaboard.com for more info.

Rent Cycle by RentCycle.com (Web application)

The rea­son why we picked RentCycle.com is because of their idea — reduce.reuse.rent. Rent Cycle can be poten­tially great for dive oper­a­tors in vaca­tion des­ti­na­tion. Why? Well… Rent Cycle allows your cus­tomers to reserve rental gears and pay before their tour begins right at their fin­ger tips. This web appli­ca­tion has easy 3 steps for setup. First, you reg­is­ter. Sec­ond, you put the link to your Rent Cycle store on your web­site. Third, let cus­tomer book their rental gears and pay. All admin­is­tra­tion is done over the web. You can tech­ni­cally man­age it from anywhere.

One of the great things we dis­cov­ered about this ser­vice is you can cre­ate the store today with up to 5 items for free of charge. Fea­tures include an inven­tory man­age­ment, online con­fir­ma­tion, pay­ment pro­cess­ing, reser­va­tion sys­tems, reports, and SMS (Short Mes­sag­ing Ser­vices) to list a few.

How is this help­ing your dive busi­ness? Because you don’t need papers to track every­thing. You are recy­cling other people’s ideas to a good use, and reduc­ing the cost but still renting.

Scuba Div­ing Mobile Appli­ca­tions (Plat­form varies)

Some of the things we dis­cov­ered dur­ing our research is that a lot of peo­ple are inter­ested in mobile scuba div­ing appli­ca­tions, iPhone appli­ca­tions in par­tic­u­lar. For instance, if you run a search for “scuba div­ing appli­ca­tion iphone” on Google, you’ll prob­a­bly see a lot of forum entries by fel­low divers seek­ing “it” app.

The use of mobile appli­ca­tion on your mobile device make small dif­fer­ences, like reduc­ing the use of the paper, decreas­ing the dri­ving time etc…

After all, we decided to put a list here. Our research went so far and some divers that actu­ally use listed soft­ware are unable to get back to us on time. But here’s what we found:

• iScuba­Plan (Orig­i­nally posted on DiveVets.com) — Recre­ational Scuba Div­ing Appli­ca­tion for iPhone/iPod
• DiveLog (Orig­i­nally posted on DiveVets.com) — Full fea­tured Scuba Div­ing Log­book for iPhone/iPod
• iDeco (Orig­i­nally posted on DiveVets.com) — Multi-Level dives/Multiple Dive plan­ner for Tech­ni­cal Div­ing for iPhone/iPod
• V-Planner — King of Tech­ni­cal Div­ing Plan­ning Soft­ware for Win­dows Mobile Phones and iPhone/iPod
• Mix Blender — Full func­tion Gas Blend­ing (Nitrox/Trimix) Appli­ca­tion for iPhone/iPod
• Dive Assis­tant — Dive Plan­ning, Dive Equip­ment Man­age­ment, Dive Table Ref­er­ence for Pocket PC
• My Deco Plan — Full Func­tion Decom­pres­sion Dive Plan­ning Appli­ca­tion on the web

So, what else can you do to be a sus­tain­able diver?

Note:
All rights for the software/application listed above are reserved by its creator/owner/developer/business.
The result of this list is solely based on our researches and other divers. If you have other appli­ca­tions that you’d like to share, feel free to use the com­ment area below.
We also will add more as we hear back from our fel­low divers.
We also would like to thank those who helped us today (and dur­ing our research) to make this post happen.

Also… please visit New Scuba Mar­ket­ing for another Blog Action Day:
http://newscubamarketing.com/blog-action-day-2009-climate-change/