What is a dive logbook, and what should you record?

What a dive logbook is

A dive logbook is a running record of every dive you've made: where, when, how deep, for how long, and whatever else mattered down there. Instructors sign them, dive shops ask for them, and — more than either — they're how you remember a diving life that otherwise blurs into "somewhere warm, saw a turtle."

Practically, a logbook does three jobs. It's proof of experience: operators and courses routinely want your dive count and recent history before they'll take you on a deep or drift dive. It's a planning tool: your own record of what weight you carried with which exposure suit in which water is worth more than any generic weighting table. And it's a memory: the creatures, the buddy, the story.

What to record after every dive

The core that's worth writing down every single time:

• Date, site, and location — enough to find the spot again and to show an operator where you've dived.
• Maximum depth and dive time — the two numbers everyone will ever ask about, and the minimum for tracking your experience honestly. They're the only two fields our own log form requires.
• Weights and exposure suit — future you, standing on a boat wondering whether 4 kg was enough with the 5 mm, will thank present you.
• Gas and pressures — start and end pressure tell you your consumption rate, which is what actually plans your next dive's time.
• Conditions — water temperature, visibility, current. Patterns emerge fast: you'll learn what a site is like in March versus September.
• What you saw and who you dived with — the part you'll reread. Creatures, the buddy, the one-line story.

Everything beyond that — surface interval, safety stop, entry type, altitude, deco profile — earns its place for some divers and is clutter for others. The right logbook lets you record exactly as much as you care about, and no more.

Paper or online?

Paper logbooks have real charm: stamps, instructor signatures, salt stains. They also get wet, get full, and get left in a drawer three house moves ago. An online scuba diving logbook trades the stamps for durability — every dive backed up, searchable, and on whatever device is in your hand, including the phone on the boat.

The honest answer for many divers is both: paper for the ritual and the signatures, online as the permanent record. If you're choosing software, our roundup of the best dive log apps compares the serious options, including ours.

Already have years of paper or another app?

Old dives count. If they're in another program, most dive software exports a file you can import here in one click — see the guides for Subsurface, UDDF, CSV, Excel, and DAN DL7. If they're on paper, a spreadsheet with a date and depth column is enough to bring them in.

Starting one today

The best logbook is the one you'll still be keeping in five years, and the biggest predictor of that is friction: if logging a dive takes ten minutes, it stops happening. That's the entire design brief behind Scuba Diving Logbook — two required fields, every other field yours to toggle, and a free plan with unlimited cloud-stored dives. You can log a dive right now, before you even make an account.