Privacy

Your dives are yours.
We don't have a copy.

DeepSix Dive Log is a native Apple platform app. There is no DeepSix account and no DeepSix copy of your dive log. Your dives live on your devices and sync through your personal iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit framework. We never see them.

DeepSix does operate a handful of small services — catalog downloads for the wreck and Wonders databases, a tide relay, and voluntary submission queues for wreck and Wonder contributions, species photos, and diagnostics. None of them can see your dive log, and each one is documented in DeepSix-operated services below.

This page describes what data DeepSix handles, where it goes, and what choices you have. It is written to align with Apple's App Privacy disclosures so that the privacy nutrition label on our App Store page matches this page exactly.

Using DeepSix on Apple TV? That app is a read-only viewer of your iCloud-synced dive log — see what's different on Apple TV for the narrower scope.

Summary

Data DeepSix collects from you None — unless you choose to send us something: a wreck or Wonder contribution, a species photo, or a diagnostic report. Each is voluntary, and you see exactly what will be sent before it leaves your device.
Data linked to your identity Only what you add to a submission yourself: an optional email address or Discord handle, or a credit name. Those fields start blank, and a submission without them is anonymous.
Data used to track you across apps and websites None.
Third-party SDKs / analytics in the app None.
Where your dive log lives Your Apple devices, synced through your personal iCloud account.
Services DeepSix operates Catalog downloads (wrecks, Wonders), a tide relay, and voluntary submission queues (contributions, species photos, diagnostics). None can see your dive log. Details below.
Optional external services you can use Listed below. Each one is opt-in and uses your own credentials when authentication is needed.

Under Apple's definition, "collect" means transmitting data off your device and retaining it for longer than the time needed to service the request. By that definition, DeepSix collects nothing unless you choose to send it. The four things you can choose to send — a wreck or Wonder contribution, a species photo, or a diagnostic report — are why the App Store privacy label lists ten types of data, all as linked to you, because a submission can carry your contact details if you add them: contact info (name, email address, Discord handle), user content (photos and the text you write), precise location (the position of a wreck or Wonder you submit), fitness (the dive conditions you choose to share with a Wonder, such as depth, water temperature and duration), and diagnostics (crash reports, performance data and app logs in a diagnostic report). Each is used only to act on that submission: to review it, credit you and follow up. None is collected automatically, and none is used for tracking or shared with data brokers.

What stays on your device

Everything that defines your dive log:

  • Dive records, sites, trips, buddies, gas mixes, equipment, certifications
  • Raw dive computer binary data (immutable, never overwritten)
  • Photos and videos matched to dives, including any underwater color correction
  • Marine life sightings, AI species identifications, and manual sightings
  • Notes, ratings, achievements
  • Apple Watch GPS and depth sample data
  • Phone GPS dive-day tracks, if you arm tracking — breadcrumbs stay in your dive log and your iCloud, and you can trim or delete them
  • Camera clock offsets and time reconciliation deltas
  • AI-generated narratives (reef, wreck, travelogue) once produced
  • Your Anthropic, OpenAI, or WorldTides API key, if you've configured one (stored in your iCloud Keychain)

None of this is transmitted to DeepSix, and none of it is stored on DeepSix infrastructure. We cannot see your dive log.

Apple system permissions DeepSix requests

DeepSix uses several Apple system frameworks. Each one prompts you for permission the first time it's needed. None of the data passes through DeepSix infrastructure — it flows between your device and the Apple framework that owns the data.

Photos. Required to associate your photos with dives, write underwater color corrections back as non-destructive adjustments, and read EXIF metadata for time and location matching. Color corrections are stored as PHAdjustmentData on the original asset — your original photo is never modified. DeepSix can read photo EXIF GPS to suggest dive site matches.

Location Services. Used by the Apple Watch app for entry and exit GPS during a dive, and on iOS/macOS for dive site assignment when you're physically near a site. Location data stays on your device and in your iCloud-synced dive log. No location data is transmitted to DeepSix.

Bluetooth. Required to communicate directly with dive computers (Shearwater, Suunto, Cressi, Mares, Scubapro, Halcyon, Divesoft, Ratio, Seac, and others). Communication is local between your device and the dive computer.

HealthKit. Read access to underwater depth and water temperature samples, used to reconstruct dive profiles when a dive was recorded by Apple Watch instead of a dedicated dive computer. The watchOS companion writes a workout record to HealthKit at the end of a dive day. HealthKit data is governed by Apple and never leaves your device through DeepSix. Dives recorded by other apps that write to Health — Apple's Depth app, or a third-party dive app — are read the same way, so a watch-only dive still gets its profile.

Local Network / Bluetooth (peer-to-peer). Used by the optional photo-sharing feature to transfer photos between two devices on the same network without going through iCloud. Transfers are peer-to-peer; DeepSix has no visibility into them.

Camera and Microphone. Not requested. DeepSix has no camera or microphone features.

Contacts. Not requested. Buddy records you create live only inside DeepSix.

What syncs through your iCloud

DeepSix uses Apple's CloudKit framework to sync your dive log across your own Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch). This sync goes through your personal iCloud account, which is controlled entirely by Apple — not DeepSix.

  • The production CloudKit container is iCloud.com.bollar.DeepSix. (Internal development builds use a separate container.)
  • Data in your iCloud account is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
  • DeepSix has no read or write access to your CloudKit data. We cannot retrieve it, restore it, or migrate it for you. If you delete a dive on one device and it syncs everywhere, it's gone — Apple is the only one with backups.
  • Sync is optional. The Sync Mode switch in Settings puts a device in local-only mode — no CloudKit traffic at all until you turn it back on — and Backup & Transfer writes a complete, lossless .deepsixarchive file you keep wherever you like.

What leaves your device, and why

Some features need external data — reef ecology, wreck history, weather, species identification. These are explicit network calls to specific APIs, all guarded by an offline-aware connectivity monitor. Every one of them is optional, and every one of them degrades gracefully without a network connection.

FEATURE WHAT GETS SENT WHERE IT GOES WHY
Reef enrichment GPS coordinates, dive date Allen Coral Atlas, NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Marine Regions Reef zone, bleaching history, ecoregion
Wreck enrichment Site name, GPS coordinates Wikidata SPARQL endpoint, Wikipedia REST API Vessel history
Weather enrichment GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m, dive date Open-Meteo (ERA5 historical archive) Surface conditions at the time of the dive
Tide enrichment (free default) GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m, dive date Open-Meteo Worldwide tidal estimates
Tide enrichment (your WorldTides key) GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m, dive date WorldTides API, directly from your device Coastal high-accuracy tides
Tide enrichment (DeepSix tide relay) GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m, dive date tides.deepsixdive.com (Patrons) High-accuracy tides without you needing a WorldTides key — see the tides section below
Wreck, Wonders & marine-area catalog download Nothing about you — a plain file download, one-way from us to you wreckdb.deepsixdive.com / wonderdb.deepsixdive.com / mpadb.deepsixdive.com Keeps the app small and the wreck, Wonders, and marine protected-area data current without an app update
Critter Expert model download Nothing about you — a one-time ~63 MB model download plus small species-catalog updates (a megabyte or two), one-way from us to you critterexpert.deepsixdive.com Fetches the free on-device species identification model; identification itself runs entirely on your device and never touches any network
Critter Expert improvement reports (opt-in) What the on-device model guessed and what you corrected it to — species names, a coarse ocean basin, the app build. No photo, no coordinates, no identifier critterexpert.deepsixdive.com Tells us which species the on-device model confuses so updates can fix them. Off by default — the first time it would apply, the app shows you the exact payload and asks; a toggle in AI & Intelligence settings turns it off any time
Species photo sharing (opt-in) The one photo you choose, re-encoded so its EXIF and GPS are gone; the species name you give it (or none); what each identifier guessed; a coarse ocean basin and water type; the license and optional credit you pick; an optional note and contact. Never coordinates critterexpert.deepsixdive.com Teaches Critter Expert species it gets wrong or doesn't know yet. Nothing is sent until you review the exact payload and tap Send
Local AI (your own model server) Photo, dive metadata Your own Ollama / LM Studio / MLX server on your Mac or LAN Private species pre-identification that never touches a cloud
GeoNames lookup GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m GeoNames API Nearby points of interest, Wikipedia articles
Species reference Taxonomic name IUCN Red List, CITES, WoRMS, FishBase Conservation status, accepted scientific names
Marine life ID (AI) Photo, GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m, depth, temp, date, candidate species list api.anthropic.com or api.openai.com (your key) Identify species in the photo
Reef / wreck / travelogue narratives (AI) Site name, country, dates, depths, species, your own notes, enrichment results; GPS coordinates rounded to ~110 m for dive entries and travelogues api.anthropic.com or api.openai.com (your key) Generate readable prose

No personal information is sent with any of these calls. No name, no email, no device identifier, no Apple ID, no IP-linked profile. The external services see GPS coordinates and dive metadata only. The only DeepSix-operated endpoints in the table are the catalog downloads and the tide relay — what they see and keep is spelled out in the next section.

What those external services do with the data they receive is governed by their own terms.

DeepSix-operated services

DeepSix runs a small number of services of its own. Being specific about them matters more to us than a blanket "we have no servers" claim — so here is every one, what it sees, and what it keeps. None of them can read your dive log.

Wreck, Wonders & marine-area catalogs (wreckdb.deepsixdive.com, wonderdb.deepsixdive.com, mpadb.deepsixdive.com, plus the Critter Expert model at critterexpert.deepsixdive.com). The community wreck database, the Wonders catalog, marine protected-area boundaries, and the on-device species ID model live on our servers for two reasons: they'd bloat the app if bundled whole, and hosting them means new wrecks, boundaries, and species reach you without waiting for an app update. The data flows one way — from us to you. The download request carries nothing about you or your dives, and we don't build profiles from download logs.

Tide relay (tides.deepsixdive.com). When your high-accuracy tides are funded by DeepSix — the Patron thank-you — the request goes through this relay, which holds our WorldTides billing key so the key never has to ship inside the app. Tide coordinates are rounded to about 110 m on your device, before the request is sent — so the relay and WorldTides only ever see the rounded point, and nothing about you: no account, no identifier, no coordinate history tied to a person. (Rounding can't change a tide answer — tidal stations are tens of kilometres apart.) Answers are cached at the edge, so divers asking about the same stretch of coast share one upstream call, and repeats are never re-sent to WorldTides at all. If you bring your own WorldTides key, your requests skip the relay entirely and go directly from your device to WorldTides — rounded the same way.

Wreck and Wonder contributions (wrecks.deepsixdive.com, wonders.deepsixdive.com). Entirely voluntary. If you choose to contribute a wreck or Wonder — or a correction, or a photo — the submission contains the facts and coordinates of the site. A Wonder can also carry the conditions of your dive there: max depth, water temperature, duration, visibility, current, the month (never the full date), the marine life you saw and the dive type. Each of those has its own switch on the review screen, so you can turn off any you'd rather not share. Nothing else goes unless you add it: an email address or Discord handle is optional and only used to credit you or follow up. Photos are stripped of EXIF metadata before upload, and you affirm you hold the license to share them. You see exactly what will be sent before you tap Send, your own copy stays in your logbook either way, and a person reviews every submission before anything is published. Submissions are kept for review and, if accepted, become part of the community database.

Website chat assistant. The "Ask DeepSix Dive Log" chat on this site runs on a DeepSix server. Conversations are held in memory for up to 30 minutes and are not stored or logged — your messages are sent to Anthropic, our AI provider, to generate each reply, governed by their API terms, and DeepSix keeps no transcript. The one exception is yours to trigger: if you choose to open a support ticket or ask for an email follow-up, the conversation and the email address you provide are sent to our issue tracker so a person can respond — the chat says so right next to the button. Email [email protected] to have a ticket or lead deleted.

Critter Expert improvement reports (critterexpert.deepsixdive.com). When you override an identification the on-device model made — reject it, correct it, or let cloud AI overrule it — DeepSix can report the mix-up so future model updates fix it. The report is content-free by design: the predicted and corrected species names, a coarse ocean basin (never coordinates), the model version, and the app build. No photo, no location, no identifier of any kind. It is off until you say otherwise — the first qualifying override shows you the exact payload, byte for byte, and nothing is queued or sent unless you agree. A toggle in AI & Intelligence settings turns it off any time.

Species photo sharing (critterexpert.deepsixdive.com). Entirely voluntary. When Critter Expert or another identifier gets a photo wrong, or doesn't know the animal, you can send that one photo so a future update learns it. The photo is re-encoded before upload, so its EXIF metadata and GPS are gone, and nothing about where you took it goes with it beyond a coarse ocean basin and whether the water was fresh or salt. Alongside it: the name you give it (or none), what each identifier guessed, the open license you choose, and — only if you add them — a credit name, a note, and an email address or Discord handle. You affirm you hold the rights to share it, you see the exact payload before you tap Send, and a person reviews every photo before it is used. Email [email protected] to have a photo removed.

Diagnostics receiver (diagnostics.deepsixdive.com). When you report a problem, the in-app "Submit to DeepSix" button sends your diagnostic bundle here so you don't have to save a zip and email it. It is never automatic — you trigger it, and the bundle is redacted app-side (API keys and personal data removed) before it leaves your device. An email address or Discord handle is optional, included only if you want a reply. Bundles are kept while we work the issue; email [email protected] anytime to have yours deleted. Saving the bundle and sharing it yourself remains available if you prefer.

Support email ([email protected]). Inbound mail is machine-processed: an automated system files each message into our private issue tracker so nothing gets lost, and a few request types — like early-adopter badge claims — get an automated reply. A person reads every thread. Email us anytime to have your correspondence deleted.

On-device intelligence

Several DeepSix features look like "AI" but run entirely on your device with no network calls:

  • Apple's Vision framework powers photo pre-screening, saliency, aesthetics scoring, horizon detection, face detection, and perceptual hashing for duplicate matching. All on-device.
  • Apple's FoundationModels framework (iOS / macOS 26 and later) powers the sighting taxonomy assist when you log a species manually. The on-device model resolves common names to taxonomic hierarchy without any network call.
  • Underwater color correction runs on the GPU via a Metal kernel on your device. The image data never leaves the device.
  • Vision feature prints used for photo matching are stored locally on the device and in your iCloud-synced dive log.
  • Critter Expert the free on-device species identification model, runs entirely on the Neural Engine after its one-time download. Photos you identify with it never touch any network.

These features work in airplane mode, on a liveaboard, or anywhere else you don't have a connection.

AI features and your API key

DeepSix Dive Log is free. The AI features are bring-your-own-key (BYOK) only — there are no in-app purchases for AI credits, and DeepSix never charges you for AI usage.

You add your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key in AI & Intelligence settings. Your key is stored in your iCloud Keychain and synced across your devices by Apple. DeepSix never sees the key — the request goes directly from your device to api.anthropic.com or api.openai.com. You are the customer of the AI provider, and your usage is governed by your contract with them. You pay the provider directly at their published rates; we don't take a cut.

What goes to your provider depends on the feature: for narratives, the site name and country, dates, depths, the species you logged, your own notes and — for dive entries and travelogues — GPS coordinates rounded to about 110 m; for species identification, the photo plus the same rounded coordinates and dive details. DeepSix relays none of it.

You can also skip the cloud entirely: DeepSix can use a vision model you run yourself — Ollama, LM Studio, or MLX on your Mac or local network. In that configuration, photos and dive metadata go only to your own machine. No key, no cloud, no third party.

Or turn AI off entirely in AI & Intelligence settings. Nothing in DeepSix breaks.

Photos sent to AI providers

When you use AI marine life identification or AI narrative generation, DeepSix sends the relevant photo(s) and dive metadata to the AI provider you've configured for that single API call. DeepSix does not retain the photo — the call goes directly from your device to the provider, never through DeepSix infrastructure, and is not cached or logged by us.

What the AI provider does with the photo on their end is governed by their own API terms, not by DeepSix. If you need to verify their retention, training, and data-use policies:

We link to their current terms because those terms can change, and we don't want to speak for them on a page that's also our privacy commitment to you.

Tide data and your WorldTides key

Tide enrichment has three paths:

  • Free default (Open-Meteo). Worldwide tidal estimates, no key, no signup. Requests send GPS and date only, directly from your device to Open-Meteo.
  • High-accuracy with your own WorldTides key (Tides settings). The request goes directly from your device to WorldTides and you pay them. DeepSix is not in the middle and doesn't see what coordinates you look up.
  • High-accuracy funded by DeepSix. This path is a thank-you that comes with supporting the app through an App Store Patron purchase. These requests go through the DeepSix tide relay described above — coordinates rounded to ~110 m on your device, a date, nothing about you, answered from a shared edge cache.

Your WorldTides key, if you bring one, is stored in your iCloud Keychain and synced across your devices by Apple. DeepSix never sees it.

Patron tiers and in-app purchases

DeepSix offers optional Patron tiers through Apple's StoreKit framework. They support development; they don't unlock app features (the app is free in full).

  • Plankton — monthly or annual subscription. Bundles a WorldTides subscription for high-accuracy tides.
  • Whale — one-time purchase. Includes WorldTides for life.
  • Megalodon — one-time purchase. Same benefits as Whale.

Purchases happen entirely through Apple. We receive an anonymous purchase receipt from Apple that allows the app to verify your Patron status; we do not receive your name, email, payment method, or any other identifying information. Refunds and subscription management are handled through Apple.

If your Plankton subscription lapses, your dives, photos, and notes remain. Tide data reverts to the Open-Meteo default. Nothing you entered disappears.

Diagnostics and crash reports

DeepSix can generate diagnostic bundles that you choose to share with us when reporting bugs. Diagnostic bundles are never transmitted automatically. The easiest path is the in-app "Submit to DeepSix" button, which sends the bundle to our diagnostics receiver (see DeepSix-operated services) — API keys and personal data are redacted app-side before anything leaves your device, and contact details are optional. You can also save the bundle and share it yourself via email or Discord.

A diagnostic bundle may include: app version, OS version, device model, recent log entries, crash and hang reports that iOS collected for DeepSix, dive computer model and serial, and counts of dives, sites, and photos. It does not include your dive content, photos, or GPS coordinates unless you explicitly choose to include a specific dive's data.

DeepSix does not use third-party analytics. We do not embed Google Analytics, Firebase, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Sentry, or any similar service. We do not use any third-party SDKs that collect data.

Deleting your data

Because we never have a copy of your data, deletion is entirely under your control:

  • Delete individual dives, sites, photos, or trips from inside the app. Changes sync to your other devices through iCloud.
  • Delete everything from one device by deleting the DeepSix app. Your iCloud data remains, ready to sync to a fresh install.
  • Delete everything everywhere by signing out of iCloud, then in iCloud Settings on any Apple device: Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → DeepSix → Delete Data from iCloud.

The only records DeepSix can hold are the ones you chose to send: a wreck or Wonder contribution, a species photo, a diagnostic bundle, or support correspondence. Email [email protected] to have any of them deleted. (Accepted wreck and Wonder facts live on in the community database — they describe a site, not you — but we'll remove any optional contact details or contributed photos on request, including a species photo that has already been reviewed.)

What's different on Apple TV

DeepSix Dive Log for Apple TV is a read-only cinematic viewer for the dive log already in your iCloud account. When launched, it authenticates with Apple's CloudKit framework using the iCloud account signed in on the Apple TV and reads the dive records and photo assets your other devices wrote there. It does not log dives, does not import dive computers, does not edit or delete anything, and does not transmit anything to DeepSix.

The following capabilities described elsewhere on this page are deliberately absent on tvOS:

  • No dive computer Bluetooth connections, imports, or exports
  • No AI species identification, narratives, or any cloud AI calls
  • No Anthropic, OpenAI, or WorldTides API key handling
  • No in-app purchases or Patron tiers
  • No PhotoKit access (Apple TV has no Photos library)
  • No HealthKit access
  • No Location Services
  • No Bluetooth, camera, microphone, or peripheral access
  • No diagnostic bundle generator

The tvOS app makes no network calls to any service other than Apple's CloudKit. None of the voluntary submissions described above exist on Apple TV, so nothing there is sent to DeepSix.

Children

DeepSix Dive Log is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from children.

Data controller

The data controller for DeepSix Dive Log is a limited liability company registered in the United States; the project itself is built by a globally distributed independent team. For privacy questions, data requests, or any other concern covered by GDPR, CCPA, or any other applicable law, contact [email protected].

Because your dive log never touches our infrastructure, most "data subject" requests (access, portability, deletion) are satisfied by your direct control over your local and iCloud-synced data as described above. For the voluntary submissions we can hold — contributions and diagnostics — contact us and we'll act promptly.

Changes

If this page changes materially, we'll note the change in the TestFlight or App Store release notes for the build that ships with the change.

Contact

Questions about privacy: [email protected]

Last updated: September 2026.