Animal Crossing swimming guide – how to go swimming and diving in New Horizons

Stefan L 03/07/20 Comments Closed

With the release of the first Summer Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Tom Nook has now decided that it’s safe for you to head out into the oceans that surround your island. It’s a big returning feature for the game, opening up a new type of sea life to collect for Blathers’ museum, and introducing new characters to interact with.

But you can just wade out into the water, you need to make sure you’re wearing the right clothes for the job! Here’s how to do some of that Animal Crossing swimming and diving in New Horizons

We’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

Where to get a wet suit

To go swimming and diving in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you’re going to need to have a swim suit. You can quite simply buy these from the cabinet in Nook’s Cranny, or by redeeming Nook Miles at the terminal in the Resident Services Building.

A swim suit from Nook’s Cranny costs 3000 Bells, while it’s just 800 Miles from the terminal (though you will have to wait for that suit to arrive in the mail the next day).

In order to actually go swimming, you need to put the swim suit on by selecting it in your inventory. Note, this weirdly just goes over the top of your other clothes, and you’ll still be wearing socks, shoes, hats and headwear as well. If you want to look the part, you’ll have to take all those off manually.

How to swim and dive

Swimming is as simple as popping that swim suit on, walking up to the sea and pressing A to leap in! Bonus points for running and dive bombing!

To move around in the water, you need to repeatedly tap A to swim, and that’s true whether you’re swimming on the surface or diving down below. Diving is a single tap of Y.

To get back out of the ocean, you just need to swim over to one of the beaches on your island and you’ll wade out the water.

How to catch Sea Creatures

Catching sea creatures is one of the main reasons to go swimming (outside of just wanting to cool off on a hot summer’s day!) Luckily, it’s as easy to do as all the other activities in the game.

While you’re swimming out in the ocean, keep an eye out for streams of bubbles coming from underwater. That’s the telltale sign of a sea creature lurking under the surface!

To catch the creature, swim over to the bubbles and tap Y to dive down below the surface. This shifts the camera angle to a top-down view, where you’ll more clearly see the shadow of the sea creature. You just need to tap A to swim into that shadow and you’ll resurface, automatically grabbing the sea creature.

There’s 40 sea creatures to catch in the game, with Blathers more than happy to welcome them into his museum, even though there’s a lot of watery plant life in the mix as well. Oh, and if you catch a Scallop, Pascal the Otter will appear offering to trade!