Dive Log Book: The Complete Scuba Diving Logbook, Explained

“Log the dive before you leave the boat,” Callum Rhode writes on the first working page. “Details you are certain you will remember tonight are gone by the third dive of the day.” Dive Log Book is built around that one piece of advice: a 120-page logbook that makes it fast to capture a dive properly, and useful enough afterward that you’d actually reach for it again.

100 dive pages, in both units

The core of the book is 100 individual dive log pages, each with the same structure: site name, region, country and GPS coordinates; dive type (boat, shore, drift, night, wreck, reef, wall, cavern, ice, altitude, training); time and depth in both metric and imperial; gas and cylinder details covering air, nitrox, trimix, open circuit, CCR and sidemount; and space for a repetitive-dive note. Two dive-log-index pages at the back (dives 1–50, 51–100) let you find any dive by date, site or depth in seconds, without flipping through the whole book.

The page most divers actually need

Buried between the certification section and the first dive page is what the book calls “the single most useful page” — a personal weighting reference. Log your exposure suit, water type, cylinder and the weight you used, plus how it needs adjusting, and you stop guessing at your weights on the first dive of every trip. It’s a small page that solves a genuinely common problem: showing up somewhere new in a rented 5mm wetsuit with no idea how much lead to ask for.

Everything around the diving, not just the diving

The rest of the book covers what a diver actually needs between dives: a certification record for every card you hold, a training and specialty log, a full equipment configuration sheet with serial numbers (the thing an insurer or customs officer will actually ask for), a service and inspection log for regulators, BCDs and cylinders, running dive statistics with milestone tracking, and a personal-bests page. Toward the back: a SAC/RMV worksheet with the formulas worked out in both units, a gas and nitrox quick-reference (MOD, best mix, EAD, PO₂ at depth), a pre-dive buddy check (BWRAF), ascent and safety-stop guidance, an emergency action plan page to fill in on arrival somewhere new, and a marine life sightings list.

What it doesn’t do

It’s a personal record-keeping tool, not a training manual, a decompression table, or a substitute for your certification course or your dive computer. The safety and gas-planning pages are memory aids for divers already trained in the relevant skills — not instruction.

FAQ

Is this a replacement for a dive computer? No — it’s a paper record of what you did, not a device that calculates anything for you in real time.

Does it work for nitrox and trimix divers, or just air? All of them. The gas and cylinder section on every dive page covers air, nitrox, trimix, open circuit, CCR and sidemount, and the quick-reference page has the nitrox formulas built in.

What happens after I fill all 100 dive pages? Move on to a second copy — many divers keep one logbook per few years of diving as a record, similar to how they’d keep dive computer download history.

Do dive centers actually check logbooks? Yes, especially for higher-level training or when diving somewhere new — a current logbook and certification record together are often what a dive center asks to see before certain dives.

Want the fast digital version to fill in on the boat between dives? Try the free Dive Log & Gas Tracker — it does the SAC/RMV math for you automatically.