By ALLEN FARMELO of Gear Patrol

 

Back in the 1960s, Aquadive built dive watches, and only dive watches. These purpose-driven timepieces were standard fare among SCUBA divers who would see them in magazine ads, in local dive shops, or on the wrists of their fellow divers. Aquadive made a wide assortment of models, from snorkeling watches to enormous electronic models with oil-filled depth gauges for professional divers. But Aquadive, like so many other watch brands, didn’t survive the ascendency of electronic quartz watches. They went kaput in the 1980s.
 
In 2011, avid dive watch collector Rick Marei brought Aquadive back to life, first with watches built into new-old-stock cases he acquired along with the company. Those are all gone now, so today Aquadive produces its cases in Germany, and it sources its movements and performs assembly in Switzerland. The newly designed Aquadive Bathyscaphe is the brand’s current flagship model, and this new watch is loosely based on that large watch with the depth gauge, the legendary Aquadive Model 50.

 

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Nowadays, you can hardly throw a dead fish without hitting another new dive watch brand. The availability of Far East shops that will stamp out a few hundred watch cases based on a napkin sketch means that almost anyone with a little ambition and a small loan can start their own watch company. And there are many, with names and retro designs evoking the romance and adventure of the early days of diving. While it’s great to see such a swell in interest in timepieces and the entrepreneurial spirit so healthy, it’s also great to see an old name revived and a brand that is staying faithful to its heritage. Case in point: Aquadive and its Bathyscaphe dive watches in two sizes. I’ve been wearing the smaller Bathyscaphe 100 in stealthy black DLC trim for the past few months and have come away duly impressed.

The Swiss brand, Aquadive, was popular in the 1960s and 70s and, as their name suggests, they specialized only in dive watches. Huge for their era, sturdy and affordable, Aquadive quickly became the brand of choice for recreational divers. Their innovative Time-Depth 50, with its integrated depth gauge and electronic movement cemented Aquadive’s name in the annals of great dive watches. Collectors hunt for Time-Depth 50s in good condition but, given their age and regular underwater use, they are scant. And while Aquadive produced other models over their brief history, the brand went the way of so many others when cheap Japanese quartz watches took hold of the market.

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