Submarius
Global water clarity for divers
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Submarius started as just a dashboard for diving conditions, but I quickly realized that there is simply no API for water clarity, nor even a simple way to calculate it. Divers call it viz, and it is one of the most consequential factors for a diving experience. So I dove the viz rabbit-hole. I landed on a state-augmented ensemble kalman filter. More details on the /clarity page. My question for the HN audience is if anyone knows of a better way of doing this? There is a ton of satellite data to train on, but a lot of it is messy (clouds read as turbid water, shallow reefs reflect abnormally causing bad readings, etc). Appreciate any feedback on the subject. Enjoy the read!
HN · launched Jun 20, 2026 · 14 upvotes (top 31%) · 0 views
Niche: environmental and geospatial analytics software · 124 launches, 14 in the last 7 days ▼ -7% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Travel & hospitality
- Analytics & BI
- B2C
- Not AI
- Commercial product
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More like this: all 124 launches in environmental and geospatial analytics software →
Could you build this?
No Accurately forecasting underwater visibility worldwide requires complex oceanographic modeling, satellite radiometry data processing, and calibration against marine sensor networks.
What it would actually take: The system requires high-throughput GIS/remote-sensing pipelines ingesting petabytes of multi-spectral satellite data (Copernicus Sentinel-3, MODIS/Aqua for Kd490 diffuse attenuation coefficients) fused with NOAA hydrodynamic, tidal, and river discharge models. The hard part is physical modeling: converting satellite water surface reflectance into real-time horizontal Secchi-depth/diver visibility across coastal zones subject to turbidity, wave resuspension, and plankton blooms. This requires specialized oceanographers, remote sensing data engineers, and heavy spatial computing infrastructure.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Existing dashboards for water activities (sailing, rowing)
Concerns raised: Unclear messaging about whether it covers multiple activities or is activity-specific, Sharing functionality is difficult to discover and use, URL structure doesn't support easy deep linking for specific locations
Feature requests: Deep links with location format like `/diving/location/{lat},{lng}`, Easier sharing mechanism for location-specific conditions
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 66 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #27 of 67 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 210 days after the earliest competitor.
- Diver Atlas Tools · ph · 2026-10-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- I made a tactical map-based WWII submarine simulator (public beta) · hn · 2026-05-18 · 125 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- DiveGrade · ph · 2026-11-13 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- I turned algae into a bio-altimeter and put it on a weather balloon · hn · 2025-11-22 · 142 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Under-water-image-enhancement · github · 2026-09-09 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- DiveHub · ph · 2026-10-28 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- GeoTraceroute · hn · 2026-04-29 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- DepthGaze · ph · 2026-09-27 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.39
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