About DiveViz
DiveViz is 10+ years in the making, starting from the bedroom as a passion project of Founder Chris Cheezem. Cheezem studied Oceanography at the United States Naval Academy and then served for 4 years on large Naval vessels before becoming a Deep Sea Diving Officer and working in the shipyard for three years. With his knowledge of the ocean Chris began formulating his own "algorithm" for dive conditions; at the beginning of 2019 he then was sharing his 'Daily Dive Reports' for the San Diego coast via a website blog. This blog caught on with the local divers for its usefulness, morphed into an Instagram page to reach more people, and then... he thought, let's go big or go home.
In 2020 the idea of an app was coming to life; a Kickstarter was launched to support the large leap but did not hit its goal so no backing was received. Regardless, Cheezem pushed on and his core team of 2 managed to secure Government funding by 2021, and put in motion the development of the first underwater visibility forecasting model.
As of 2022 DiveViz, LLC. has now since developed an app and algorithm to communicate accurate real-time and forecasted ocean visibility reports. The platform is a prognostic tool that will lead to more coordinated & timely responses to high visibility events for the recreational, commercial, scientific, and military diving communities while improving advanced activity planning for all ocean activities. DiveViz is working to use predictive analytics and machine learning to address the numerous influences that must be accounted for in visibility forecasting, including physical factors like: currents, wind, waves, storm patterns, near shore rainfall, upwelling strength, and thermocline circulation, as well as biological factors including: algae blooms, nutrient inputs, and human activity; without much historic ocean visibility data, researchers to date had not yet been able to conduct such an analysis. DiveViz will be engaging with the recreational diving community to crowdsource the first dataset of visibility reports, and in collaboration with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, continue refining the first visibility forecasting algorithm.
AWARDED PHASE I & II FUNDING VIA THE SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION AND RESEARCH (SBIR) GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA).
