Dive Site Naming Protocol?

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Dubious

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Location
Wisconsin
Greetings All,

As my wife and I dive and explore more freshwater lakes, we are finding that many of the lake names are the same or their are multiple dive sites in a single body of water. I was curious how you label your dive site in your logs. I am using subsurface and was thinking about changing my naming protocol. Maybe something like Wazee Lake | Bluegill Alley | Black River Falls, WI or Lake Michigan | Prins Willem V | Milwaukee, WI

Dubious.
 
Yey! Am watching this thread as a diver interested in GNU/Linux.
 
I name mine as: Site, Suburb/Town/Island, State/Province/Island, Country.

My favourite site is: The Leap, Kurnell, NSW, Australia.

Some OS sites:
El Boiler, San Benedicto, Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico
Liberty Wreck, Tulamben, Bali, Indonesia
 
Depends on how precise you need (or want) to be.
For example I log "Paddy's Head", NS because everyone knows where that is. I'm not actually sure if there is a settlement of the same name. I don't bother with ("on St. Maragrets Bay").
--OTOH, I will log "by Bridge in Ft. Walton Beach, FL in Choctawhatchee Bay"-- because there are several spots you can dive in that bay (none particularly good....).
I guess all that matters is that you know where the heck it is when you read your log.
 
Good question! Most of us who log our dives have struggled with this at one point or another (or all the time!). Sometimes it is obvious and other times not so much.

For example. I have 100+ dives at Gilboa Quarry. I never felt the need to differentiate shallow side, deep side, shallow side then following the road down into the deep site, shallow side then over the wall into the deep side, etc. If it was a unique dive (like the first time I circled the entire quarry) I would capture it in the notes but not as a unique site.

The terminology I typically use is Location followed by Site. For example, the Eber Ward location is Lake Michigan and site is Wreck: Eber Ward. The Cedarville location is Lake Huron and the site is Wreck: Cedarville Bow (or Stern) given that the wreck is so large.

I also like to capture the charter operator and where we left from. I capture those separately from the Location and the Site.

Here in Southeast Florida choosing what name to use for a reef drift dive can be especially challenging for various reasons:
  1. Where the boat leaves from is typically very different from where offshore the site is located. That often trips up those that don't know better. I hear many people say they went diving in West Palm Beach. No they didn't. There is no diving in West Palm Beach. The dives are off of Palm Beach, Palm Beach Shores, Juno Beach, etc. Blue Heron Bridge is in Riviera Beach not West Palm Beach.
  2. Sites often have different names depending upon what charter boat you are using.
  3. The number of sites you hit can vary greatly depending upon how strong the current is.
  4. Often times there are different "layers" to the naming of sites. For examples, Breakers is the reef structure off of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Boynton Ledge is the same thing off of Boynton Beach/Gulfstream/Briny Breezes and Jupiter Ledge is the same thing off of Jupiter Island/Jupiter FL. However, these sites have many unique sub-site names given to unique structures by the various Charter operators. Black Condo, Tumbled Rocks, 4th Window, Dive-O-Rama, Tear Drop, Gulfstream, Briny Breezes, Capt. Kurls, Leigh's Ledge, Tunnels, etc. etc.
For complex locations like South FL I just record what I can and try and be consistent. Sometimes I will just document Boynton Ledge or Breakers while other times I will get more detailed.

I'm sure others have different techniques. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Remember it is YOUR LOG BOOK. Do what works for you.
 
When charter diving I call the site "......off Gulf Shores". 3 miles out. For my shell collection labelling I just call it "Gulf Shores".
 
The site naming in Boynton Beach is extremely variable. I learned all the site names from Kevin Metz at Underwater Explorers. The site names by Capt Jim at Loggerhead and by Starfish are entirely different. Capt Jim uses and older nomenclature, not sure what Starfish uses. I go by shore landmarks and generally know where I am.
 
Best approach I've found is starting big and going smaller with as many/few items as needed for a particular site.

ie, Country, (State), (one or more of City/Town/Area/Island/Reef), Site name, (sub-site name)

That way you can get as detailed as you like.
The only thing this approach is missing is the ability to give a site multiple names, but that could be added in the site description.

Unfortunately Subsurface itself doesn't have very good support for dive site naming and any rework would require MAJOR effort. Furthermore, since everybody has a different idea of how to capture dive site names there's no way to please everybody. So just having a single free-form field might be the best approach after all that way people can adopt whatever works best for them.

I'm still hoping one day there will be an online dive site resource which doesn't just allow people to contribute, but also allows software to look sites up via an API. (If anybody knows of one, please comment)
 
I have 100+ dives at Gilboa Quarry. I never felt the need to differentiate shallow side, deep side, shallow side then following the road down into the deep site, shallow side then over the wall into the deep side, etc. If it was a unique dive (like the first time I circled the entire quarry) I would capture it in the notes but not as a unique site.

My wife and I dive a lot at Wazee lake which has many different entry points with different attractions/characteristics. I was unsure if I should log each entry point separately but your point of view makes perfect sense to me.

The terminology I typically use is Location followed by Site

Best approach I've found is starting big and going smaller with as many/few items as needed for a particular site.

Starting larger and then going smaller makes sense from a sorting/organization perspective.

Unfortunately Subsurface itself doesn't have very good support for dive site naming and any rework would require MAJOR effort.

I wish subsurface would have a way to add state and city in addition to their country field.
 
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