Echo³ is live — explore dive sites in 3D, starting in Australia
You know that first dive on a new site. A pin on a map, a photo from someone's dive log, maybe a scribbled sketch from a dive shop — you get in the water with a rough idea and the site reveals itself as you go. Half your attention goes to navigation instead of the reef. The good stuff — the wall that drops away, the gutter where the sharks sit, the ledge with the nudibranchs — that's usually dive five, not dive one.
Echo³ changes that. Every supported dive site on Pelagic Pro now has a fully interactive 3D dive map — a real model of the actual seafloor, built from real depth data, that you can orbit, tilt, and fly through before you ever gear up. It's live today, and we're adding new regions continuously as we work our way up the east coast.
This isn't an illustration — it's the actual reef
The terrain in Echo³ reflects real depths at that exact site. The walls are where the walls are. The drop-offs are the depths they're at. What you see on screen is what you'll find when you descend — not an artist's impression, the real seafloor.
Depth reads as colour — aqua in the shallows, deepening through blue-green to dark indigo at the bottom — with contour lines every 5 metres so you can read the shape of a reef at a glance. Sites with gentler terrain get a vertical exaggeration slider, so features that would be invisible on a flat map become obvious.
3D reef trails that show you the best of the site
This is the part we're most proud of. Every Reef Trail on Pelagic — routes we've built from our own fieldwork, dive after dive — now renders directly onto the 3D terrain. Not a line on a flat map. A route that actually follows the seafloor: dropping down walls, tracing sand channels, hugging the reef the way you would on the dive itself.
You can watch a trail from any angle before you're in the water, in exactly the shape it takes underwater. It's the fastest way we know to learn a new site — and the best way to make sure you're not missing the parts of a reef most divers never find.
"I opened a new site in Echo³ before diving it for the first time. I knew exactly where I was going and felt like I already knew the place." — Harry Drake, Pelagic Pro member, Sydney
Built for actually planning a dive, not just looking at one
Echo³ isn't just a viewer — it's a planning tool. A measure tool gives you real distances and bearings across the terrain, so you can check a swim, confirm a turnaround point, or plan a surface swim before you're standing on the beach deciding whether conditions are good enough to push further. Cinematic camera modes — orbit, fly-over, and a trail-following flythrough — let you preview a dive start to finish without getting wet. Every entry point, exit point, and point of interest from the 2D map carries over, sitting exactly where it sits on the real reef.
Where Echo³ is live, and where it's going
Echo³ started in Sydney and is expanding outward from there — new sites go live as fast as we can model them, moving region by region up the east coast. The map only ever shows the Echo³ button where a real 3D model exists, so it's always obvious which sites are covered.
We're not stopping in Australia. We already have several dives sites modelled in 3D across the globe — and we'd love to know where you want us to go next.
Try it on your next dive
Open any supported site on the Pelagic map, tap the Echo³ button, and you're looking at the real seafloor in seconds. Five minutes in Echo³ and you'll know a new site better than most divers do after their first visit there.
Pro also includes visibility forecasts, Navicodes, marine life hotspots, and the full 7-day conditions forecast for every site.
Pelagic is currently invite-only. We do however keep an eye on who's genuinely interested, so a quick note about yourself goes a long way.