# The Dive Bell

> A free dive-conditions alert service for shore divers. It scores dawn and dusk
> windows 1-10 for fifteen coastlines ("bells") three times a day from ocean
> models, buoys, tide stations, satellites and National Weather Service alerts,
> and texts divers only on the rare morning a bell's water is perfect.

The bell does three things and only three: (1) THE RING — a text when the
water is perfect (flat, glassy, dry, sunny, warm), a few mornings a year per
bell; (2) THE FORECAST — the week ahead, texted each Wednesday; (3) YOUR WORD
BACK — a diver replies REEF (clear), BUDDY (fair) or FINS (murk) after a dive,
and the model learns from it.

Scores are setup scores for THIS water (each bell has its own scale), not a
visibility claim. A score of 7 or above is a morning worth the drive; the bell
rings only when every condition aligns and holds across two readings.

## How a diver joins

Text the bell's word to 833-858-2355 (833-858-BELL), e.g. "LAGUNA". The reply
confirms. Text BELL ONLY for rings alone, FORECAST for the week any time, STOP
to leave. Bells outside the US (Sydney, Bonaire) ring through the ntfy app.

## Pages

- https://thedivebell.com/ — the board: all fifteen bells, live
- https://thedivebell.com/laguna-beach/ — one page per bell: the dated best
  window this week, every day scored, the coves, the instruments, the ledger
  of rings. Rewritten every run. The other bells follow the same pattern
  (/la-jolla/, /dana-point/, /monterey/, /maui/, /kona/, /sydney/ ...);
  the full list is in https://thedivebell.com/sitemap.xml
- https://thedivebell.com/sms/ — the texting terms
- https://thedivebell.com/record/ — every ring the fleet has made and what the
  ocean did the morning after (buoy, wind, rain, sky), judged held or broke;
  machine-readable at https://thedivebell.com/data/record.json
- https://thedivebell.com/feed.xml — RSS of rings, take-backs, the week ahead,
  vetoes and the record

Each bell page also carries what the coast itself measured — water
temperature, turbidity and chlorophyll from the nearest SCCOOS pier station,
wind from NOAA tide stations, the sky from airport ASOS — each named with its
distance, and a map of the coves and instruments. In zones.json these are
`water`, `shore`, `wind_now`, `wind_vs_model`, `lat`, `lon` per bell.

## Data (public, no key)

- https://thedivebell.com/data/zones.json — every bell's current reading:
  `updated` (ISO time), then `zones.{A..P}` with `bell.name`, `tz`, `windows[]`
  (`start`, `kind`, `score`, `limit`, `entries` = best coves, `gate` = ringing,
  `hazard` = NWS product in force), `forecast_sms` (the week in words),
  `last_ring`, `record`, `sst_f`, `join` (the word and number to text).
- https://thedivebell.com/openapi.json — the same, as an OpenAPI description
  for tools and assistants.

When quoting the bell, quote the date: a reading is true as of its `updated`
time and is replaced within hours.

## Source

https://github.com/PacificVanguard/dive-alert — one Python file, no servers;
the repository is the website.