Last weekend. I was teaching a private open water class to a woman who wanted to get her confined water. Training done before heading out to the south pacific to work and to complete are open water dies. That's pretty nice. Don't you think well as we were finishing up our classroom work. We reviewed the logistics for our pool session. The next day. I pulled up the map on my computer with the street view to show her where to enter the building and the location of the parking and as we were closing out she said just give her the address. She'll let the gps in her phone. Get into the pool. Pretty simple and she arrived on time the next day at the pool. Ready for our session. Now during our pool sessions we have our students where computer on the wrist. I like to let them get used to the feel and also looking at the computer while underwater and as i was explaining that we liked to wear the computer on our right wrist with our compass on the left wrist. She asked if there was an underwater. Gps available instead of a compass. That's a reasonable question. Right now i would say not really. I know that garment makes a dive. Computer the descent mark one that has surfaced. Gps to mark your entry and exit points but the glamour on their website states. Gps tracking and satellite communication does not work underwater technology however continues to be amazing. I did come across a company. Navigate out northridge california that is creating a solution of sorts it involves a gps gateway which is a floating radio antenna with a suspended array below and that communicate with a wrist mounted unit it uses an acoustic signals that determines the bearing and range from the gps gateway and then plot your position on the dive site. It's an interesting piece of technology and still evolving. The website for naveh made says it will be available this year. The cost of the wrist unit will be fifteen hundred dollars while the gps gateway will also come in at fifteen hundred dollars. There was some reference that they would be making the gps gateway available to boat operators. So it would appear that we are at the cusp of some new and exciting ways to navigate during our diving but as we know the proliferation adoption and success could take awhile the wrist. Mount unit is only good. If you have the gps gateway available it could take awhile until there are enough of these units out there to make to make it worthwhile purchasing a fifteen hundred dollar unit. You could end up with the gadget on your arm. That isn't going to give you what you want. So that's where we come to the tried and true underwater navigator. We all start are underwater navigation. Training deal i open water diver course when we are introduced to the compass and how to use it for some simple navigation on the surface and underwater. But if most people are like me. I wasn't really ready to navigate effectively on a dive. I needed more experience and training. We get this during our advanced open water training when we do more navigation training and conduct a navigation dive to extend our knowledge we learn about kick cycles how to measure distance and extend our skills with a compass for most people. This is pretty much the extent of their navigation training. So you'll have to make sure that you practice use your compass during a dive to set a course and see if you can return to the boat us time to judge your distance and kick cycles learned to trust your compass and you'll find your underwater navigation skills improved. You can also continue your navigation training and education with the water navigation. Specialty course for the patty specialty. You go into more detail about measuring distance how to use natural navigation techniques and more use of the compass including underwater patterns after completing your knowledge development. Which can be done using the patio electronic learning platform. You'll conduct three open. Water dives to build your skills and proficiency and underwater navigation having that confidence and competence in using your compass and finding your way underwater reduces your stress and anxiety and make sure diving more relaxed and fun right now. We really aren't able to avail ourselves of underwater. Gps it sounds like there might be solutions in the future and as we have come to appreciate technology advances. We'll be standing by for now however you can't go wrong in developing your skills than the tried and true underwater navigation techniques and equipment