Where does my dive count start?

Dive numbers aren't stored, they're counted, so number 1 is the oldest dive in your logbook.

You can't set your dive number, and there's no starting offset to enter. Divemates doesn't store dive numbers at all: it puts your dives in date order and counts them, so number 1 is the oldest dive in your logbook rather than the first dive of your life.

Importing your old logbook fixes the count

Bring your old dives in and the numbering sorts itself out. Once they're here, the oldest one becomes number 1 and every dive after it lands where it should.

See "Bringing dives from another app" for which files we take and where to upload them.

Note: if your export file carries its own dive numbers, we leave them behind and number your logbook ourselves. Two competing numbers on one dive is worse than one.

Adding an older dive renumbers the rest

A dive number is a position, not a label, so logging a dive from years ago moves every later dive up by one. Nothing about those dives has changed, there's simply one more dive ahead of them.

A dive with no date gets no number

Without a date there's no place in the order to give it, so the dive shows no number at all. It's still in your logbook, sitting at the end of the date order.

Open the dive, set the date, and it slots into the sequence with everything else.