Nevertheless, the enduring rotating bezel in its conventional format permits for simply as much as an hour’s timing at depth. Today’s technical divers can spend far longer than that underwater due to closed circuit rebreather expertise, the advanced SCUBA format that recycles respiration gases as an alternative of dispersing them. For divers who insist on the value of getting an analog backup ought to the digital expertise fail (as all who depend on expertise know too properly it could actually), one-hour timing doesn’t minimize the mustard.

The Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa, named after the Gombessa sealife monitoring project whose chief, pioneering diver, and photographer Laurent Ballesta has been concerned within the watch’s improvement, extends that analog restrict to a few hours. The watch options an additional hour hand, which could possibly be in comparison with a GMT hand on a journey watch: While a GMT hand rotates over 24 hours to supply a second time zone studying, the hand on the Tech Gombessa makes a three-hour rotation towards bezel markings divided into three one-hour sections. 

An necessary be aware is that this isn’t a stopwatch. (Due to having a number of factors the place water ingress can happen, stopwatches usually don’t like being submerged at depth). The further hour hand itself can’t be set: It is in fixed rotation, and dive timing is made by aligning the bezel with wherever the hand occurs to be initially of the dive.

As a technical answer (which Blancpain has, in fact, patented), it’s expedient virtually to the purpose of being lo-fi, in contrast at the least to the conspicuous over-engineering related to rival watches. So too is the 300-meter depth score, which, whereas ample for technical diving, is actually modest inside the style of professional-spec luxurious dive watches.

The value, alternatively ($28,000 or £24,700), is something however, as is the watch’s visible affect. A hulking 47 mm in diameter, the Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa is saved light-weight due to its Grade 23 titanium case, which encompasses a notably streamlined design to combine the strap through a single, central lug association. The indexes on the dial are minimize from blocks of luminous materials, which stands out all of the extra towards a dial of “absolute black,” a fabric whose construction absorbs 97 % of sunshine, whereas the bezel inlay is shaped from black ceramic. 

The watch, which additionally encompasses a helium escape valve (a characteristic for saturation dive watches developed by Rolex for releasing gasoline trapped inside the watch) at 10 o’clock on the case, is powered by a model new Blancpain motion, Calibre 13P8, which boasts an admirable five-day energy reserve.

Even if the Tech motif featured on the dial—in a considerably jarring ’80s font—could also be one thing of a misnomer, the true innovation of Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa could possibly be arising with a brand new performance that has real real-world utility, nonetheless area of interest that could be.