The Dive Watch: a real tool for the scuba diver or relegated to desk duty?

By Andrew J. Tonn

Guatemala City — Whether you ever take them underwater or not, these are three purpose built dive watches more than capable of use as a scuba diving tool. While dive computers have rightfully superseded using a waterproof watch with a timing bezel (the Doxa also includes the U.S. Navy no-decompression table on the outer bezel ring) and dive tables to track your dives, a good dive watch is a great backup timing device. In many cases it is also quicker and easier to get your elapsed time with a glance at your watch, and every diver should learn how to use dive tables in order to understand what their computer is doing. From left to right: The Seiko Prospex SRP777 “Turtle”, The Deep Star 1000 from Deep Blue Watches, and the Doxa Sub 750T Professional. Shown with a vintage Wenoka diver’s knife, a Poseidon BlackLine mask, and Pelican 1150 case. Photo taken with a Fuji XT-4 and Fujinon 35mm f/2 lens.

GUATEMALA CITY — Is the dive watch still valid as a tool for scuba divers?  The short answer is yes.  It absolutely is.  Before I begin to tell you why it is and why if you are a scuba diver you should probably wear one, first let me explain what a dive watch is.  There are many “dive style” watches that look the part but are not.  To really be considered a dive watch there is a series of standards (ISO 6425) a timepiece must meet including 100 meters of water resistance, a timing device (such as a unidirectional bezel) protected against inadvertent rotation, a certain quality of illuminated markers in dark conditions, etc. Before the advent of dive computers, a watch that could survive the water pressure, track the elapsed time of a dive and/or a decompression stop, and be read in low light, was an absolutely essential survival tool.  It, combined with decompression tables, some good old-fashioned math skills, a submersible pressure gauge and an analog depth gauge (which tracks both current and maximum depth) served the same purpose as a modern dive computer.  I find it somewhat ironic that most diving kits include an analog console with submersible pressure gauge and depth gauge but exclude an analog timing device.  Now before anyone gets in a techno-huff, I absolutely believe in using a dive computer and I own two of them, the professional Shearwater Perdix with wireless Air Integration and the more recreationally oriented and smaller Atmos Mission One (so no scuba luddite am I).  However, I also wear a dive watch while diving (and usually out of the water) and I think new students should be trained to use dive tables and analog gauges as well as computers.

Continue reading “The Dive Watch: a real tool for the scuba diver or relegated to desk duty?”