A few months ago, the clear waters of Puducherry beckoned Mumbai-based Kshitij Zodape, a 26-year-old software developer. Every year, on at least three occasions, he goes scuba diving here and there, be it the Maldives, Thailand or Bali. Certified since 2020, he decided to go diving with a fellow diver.

At 36 metres, it was a deep dive and they were nearing the seabed. This is when things went wrong for Zodape. He started shooting up towards the surface.

“I didn’t realise that my weight belt had come off. It’s something that keeps you underwater, helping you to adjust buoyancy. Without a weight belt, one would shoot towards the surface, which can be dangerous,” Zodape told
The Telegraph over a call.

When the rapid ascent started, the SOS alarm on the Apple Watch Ultra started blaring loud enough to be heard by his fellow diver. “The Apple Watch Ultra started showing a warning that I needed to slow down. If it continued, the lungs could expand or I could have suffered DCS (decompression sickness). I could have easily got hit by a boat as this was also a fishing zone,” said the software engineer with Flipkart.

His fellow diver, who was now six or seven metres below him, immediately swam towards Zodape and noticed that the weight belt had come off.

“Being a heavy fishing zone, there were too many boats around. And they wouldn’t have seen me ascend quickly,” said Zodape, who recently wrote about his experience to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has replied to his email.

“I love to dive because water has a calming effect. But it comes with a risk. And we are on borrowed time underwater,” said the diver.

“I trek and run a lot and scuba dive three or four times a year, so that’s why I got the Ultra. It is a complete package and the battery life is solid,” he said.

For his scuba diving expeditions, he relies on the Oceanic+ app, which offers full dive capabilities for recreational diving, freediving, and snorkeling. The Oceanic+ app launches automatically when submerged and constantly calculates and monitors dive parameters. Unlike most dive computers, the Oceanic+ app uses simple gestures to operate. The app provides all the safety warnings colour-coded to make complex information easy to understand. It can turn the smartwatch into a dive computer for recreational scuba diving.

Last month, Apple introduced Watch Ultra 3, which supports athletes and adventurers of all kinds. In the past, Apple Watch has been in the news for offering timely information about atrial fibrillation.