The near-indestructible dive watch is built with solid marine-grade stainless-steel casing, helium escape valve, sapphire crystal and unidirectional bezel with a black dial with luminous markings. The Deep collection features six timepieces plus the 1000M Shark Project Edition, bundled together with an interactive booklet raising awareness of the plight of sharks in our oceans. Some of the models may have other functions, but they can all go diving. German specialist Chris Benz makes watches for scuba diving. Chris Benz 1000M Shark Project Edition £320 The Promaster’s classic lines and solar charging make for a great-looking timepiece. The jet-black Royal Marine Commando is rated to 300m. Large luminous hands and hour markers plus a date window. The silver-tone stainless steel case with anti-reflective coated mineral glass has a matching dark blue face, polyurethane strap and one-way rotating elapsed-time bezel. The light-powered ‘Eco-Drive’ technology means that the classic-looking Promaster requires no access to the back for battery changing. However, most dive watches do not require a second mortgage to acquire, and even if the practical purpose of an underwater timepiece is not as necessary as it used to be, wearing one does indeed make a statement about the wearer – it says: ‘I’m a diver.’ Some can exceed the cost of a full set of dive gear and are probably more about making a statement about the wearer in terms of wealth and status rather than anything relevant to diving prowess. And those cool forms come in a wide range of prices. While recreational diving has reached a point where the teaching of dive tables has become an optional extra alongside computer-based training, technical divers will often carry two computers, hand-written slates and a robust analogue timepiece as backup.įor most of us, modern scuba diving watches are more about form than function. The saturation of the market with inexpensive, multi-faceted dive computers has, for many divers, rendered the practical necessity of an underwater watch mostly redundant. In the same year, Rolex produced the Submariner, later popularised in the 1962 James Bond film Dr No. The first scuba diving watch to feature the rotating bezel was Blancpain’s ‘Fifty Fathoms’ released in 1954 and used by Jacques Cousteau. The first waterproof timepiece was manufactured by Rolex in 1926, worn by endurance swimming champion Mercedes Gleitze during her crossing of the English Channel. Prior to the advent of affordable dive computers, the ability to measure dive time and calculate no-decompression limits, as mandated by dive tables, was vital for safe diving. Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Automatique £12,100.Seiko Marinemaster Professional 1000M Diver’s Watch £3,450.Ball Engineer Master II Skindiver Heritage £2,170.Oris Aquis Hammerhead Limited Edition £2,020. Christopher Ward C60 Trident Pro 600 £795.Seiko Prospex PADI Special Edition ‘Sumo’ £750.Chris Benz 1000M Shark Project Edition £320.Revillagigedo Archipelago & Guadalupe Island.
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