The greatest strengths of the best new dive watches lie beneath the surface

The best new dive watches operate fantastically and look supreme. However a few of their best strengths aren’t seen on the floor, writes Timothy Barber

You don’t should be practised within the arts of suburban finger-wagging to know that – as helpful as they might be – the overwhelming majority of ‘sports activities utility autos’ by no means get used for ‘sports activities’, nor stray removed from the tarmac. Equally, the traditional diving watch is more likely to be discovered virtually anyplace aside from wrapped round a wetsuit sleeve. Dive computer systems have lengthy since changed the necessity for an analogue ticker.

Nevertheless, similar to off-road autos that don’t typically go off-road, dive watches that aren’t typically used for diving have change into a much-loved piece of package for the age we dwell in. The combination of resilience, daring fashion and classic really feel, plus the capability to hold sturdy color variations, have made dive watches just like the Longines Legend Diver, the Breitling SuperOcean and the Tudor Black Bay — all descended from historic fashions — trend-setting favourites amongst trendy watch followers. Tudor this 12 months even took the unheard-of step of releasing a Black Bay cased in sterling silver – about as un-rugged a cloth as one can think about – with dial and bezel in a modish shade of taupe.

Not that this apparently impacts the elemental efficiency functionality that under- pins the designation of an genuine diving watch. (Tudor says it’s utilizing a very resilient model of the sterling silver alloy.) The benchmark for an genuine dive watch is a world customary, ISO 6425, that stipulates necessities together with a uni-directional rotating bezel to mark off elapsed time underwater; water resistance of not less than 100 metres; luminous dial options for legibility at depth; and a sequence of assessments for elements like shock resistance, anti-magnetism and condensation. You might put on it for nothing extra strenuous than mowing the garden, however as a bit of package, a real dive watch stays a imply underwater machine – in case you want it to be.

It will also be a trigger for good. A lot of watch manufacturers are taking the historic affiliation with the ocean as a foundation for selling optimistic environmental change. A few of that is as flimsy as you’d think about: press releases about stunts comparable to surfers being sponsored to carry out a morning’s seaside clean-up whereas selling a brand new watch, for instance, drop into your correspondent’s inbox often. However a number of manufacturers are placing correct weight and sources behind the difficulty, paired with watches of equal credibility and seriousness.

Blancpain, the historic tremendous watchmaking marque based mostly in Villeret within the Jura mountains, launched its Ocean Commitment project in 2014, supporting and selling a panoply of conservation initiatives all over the world. That’s tied to a watch that you possibly can consider because the Land Rover Defender of dive watches. Known as the Fifty Fathoms, it appeared in 1953, simply because the period of scuba diving was dawning and Rolex was launching its own dive watch, the Submariner.

Constructed as skilled instruments for underwater operatives in each civilian and navy arenas, the Fifty Fathoms and the Submariner have been technologically revolutionary and set the tone for all the style of dive watches that might observe. Of the 2, the Fifty Fathoms is much less identified however arguably the extra traditionally ground-breaking, and to my thoughts the extra good-looking by far. Just like the Defender, the up to date model is an unmistakeably luxurious tackle an previous and rugged fashion, retaining an unmistakably crafted really feel. Blancpain has iterated it into quite too many variants, however the basic automated in metal provides you a flexible sports activities watch that’s awash in historical past, together with a connection to the conservation initiatives Blancpain is backing.

I’ve lengthy been a fan of Oris, the unbiased firm whose no-nonsense, fuss-free strategy to each watch manufacturing and pricing could be quite refreshing. Its Aquis diving watch range gives super bang on your buck – from across the £1,600 mark you get 300-metre water resistance, scratchproof ceramic bezels and strong construct high quality throughout quite a few kinds and performance variations. It’s additionally an organization with a constructing portfolio of recherché conservation initiatives, from whale sharks to Florida’s coral reefs to the Wadden Sea off Holland, all of which have their very own restricted version, for which proceeds help the nice trigger.

My favorite? The Lake Baikal edition, created to help an obscure however fascinating conservation venture that’s been monitoring the well being of the ecosystem at Siberia’s Lake Baikal for 45 years. Each the venture itself and the distinctive, icy grey-blue dial of the related watch are, to my thoughts, mesmerising.

A model taking a very completely different strategy to the conservation story is Panerai. In a sure gentle every Panerai watch is a dive watch: they nonetheless observe the blueprint of the large, technically modern watches the corporate placed on the wrists of Italian frogmen commandos throughout World Struggle II. An obscure navy provider for many of its existence, for the reason that Nineties Panerai has been constructed right into a sizeable status maker on the coronary heart of the Richemont luxurious empire. It’s now making a whole lot of noise about turning itself right into a local weather optimistic firm, together with incorporating a excessive diploma of recycling into watchmaking immediately.

This 12 months it offered the eLab-ID, an idea watch inside its Submersible vary of hardcore dive watches, lots of the parts for that are from recycled materials. The titanium that types its case is 80 per cent recycled, and even the SuperLuminova – the glow-in-the-dark materials used for dial markings all through the business – is recycled, as are some elements of the motion. In line with the model, 98.6 per cent of the load of the watch ‘comes from supplies integrating a excessive price of recycled components’. That assertion could be interpreted quite a few methods, however the effort to carry sustainability to the watchmaking course of is nonetheless notable.

‘Within the watch business, we’re late in comparison with different industries. We have to suppose like automotive manufacturers with decreasing CO2,’ Alessandro Ficarelli, Panerai’s product director, instructed me. ‘What we need to do is create a brand new customary within the watch business. We need to show that making a watch utilizing recycled materials is feasible.’

If that’s the intention, a dive watch does appear the best platform to do it.

Picture: Panerai