Professional Diver Explains How To Use A Dive Watch

Practical Instructions, Rotating Bezels, Then vs. Now, & A Few Special Scenarios 

By Benjamin Lowry

All across the internet, you’ve heard the cries: “No one dives with a dive watch anymore!” While offensive to certain amphibious members of the watch community, myself included, this adage is largely true. Since the advent of diving computers, the dive watch has experienced a marked decline in its use as a tool for timing underwater adventures, both recreational and professional. 

However, the Use Your Tools ethos was never intended for the masses, and whether Reddit’s snarkiest users like it or not, a subset of the community still values the combination of utility and heritage provided by dive watches, choosing to use them as the tools they have always been. Intriguingly, as the dive watch’s use as an undersea instrument has waned, the popularity of the dive watch as a category has exploded, easily claiming the top spot among sports watches thanks to models like the Rolex Submariner. 

Is the Rolex Submariner the tool it was once, or simply a luxury flex? (Photo Credit: James Rupley/W.O.E.)

Despite its prominence, the dive watch is surprisingly misunderstood, especially as it relates to actual diving. Backed by my experiences in commercial and recreational scuba diving, in this Dispatch, I’ll unpack how to use a dive watch for actual diving, touching on historical use cases, the modern role played by dive watches juxtaposed against diving computers, and a few special scenarios. 

Editor’s Note: If you’re looking for general knowledge about dive watches, check out The Dive Watch - Everything You Need To Know, as well as our Brief History of the Dive Watch. 

Then vs. Now 

Diving has always required two key pieces of information: the maximum depth and the “bottom time”, which is the elapsed time between when the diver leaves the surface and when they begin their controlled ascent. This information is used to calculate a diver’s “profile”, essentially how long a diver can remain at a given depth without risking the bends or other diving maladies. 

A UDT man (left) wears a dive watch with a depth gauge and a compass, an ungainly trio of instruments.

Historically, divers relied on two primary tools for this critical information: a depth gauge and a dive watch. With the max depth of a known dive site in mind, the diver consulted a set of “dive tables” to ascertain how long they would be able to stay underwater. Doing the math on the fly or during the dive was a challenge, so the old saying among divers was to “plan your dive and dive your plan.” Understanding how to use dive tables also has a not insignificant learning curve, which keeps certain math-challenged aspiring divers out of the water altogether. 

Diving Computers 

To me, a dive watch will always have a place right alongside a diving computer. Two is one and one is none, right? (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens)

In the early 1980s, rudimentary diving computers began to change the game, serving as portable decompression calculators that did a lot of the hard work for you. There were also models like the Citizen Aqualand that bridged the gap between watches and computers by providing a traditional analog format paired with digital depth measurement. When computers were new, most divers still wore an analog watch as a backup, but as computers became more reliable and advanced over the ensuing decades, the role of the dive watch as an instrument faded, with most divers trusting their lives to computers that managed decompression calculations on the fly. Eventually, computers even monitored how much air or gas was in a diver’s tank, meaning that for most dives, the computer was the only instrument required. 

In essence, diving went from manual to automatic, and dive watches became neglected in the environment for which they were designed. Admittedly, today, many dive boats cast off their lines without a single analog wrist watch on board, but that isn’t the case for everyone, and just as some prefer a screwdriver over a drill for certain tasks, diving with a watch ain’t dead. 

General Instructions

Ben in commercial diving school at Santa Barbara City College, not a dive computer in sight. 

Ok, let’s say you use and appreciate your diving computer for its convenience and the flexibility it provides, but also value the idea of your dive watch doing its thing. How can a modern diver integrate a dive watch into their undersea loadout, maybe even picking up some utility in the process? 

As a disclaimer, at commercial diving school, I learned to dive without a computer and had hundreds of dives before I ever strapped one on. It is possible, especially on shallower, more straightforward profiles, to dive safely without a computer, assuming you have a solid handle on the tables, know your limits, and are prepared to execute the dive you planned. With that being said, diving with a computer is, in virtually every scenario, objectively safer, so that is the primary setup we’ll be describing here. 

To keep your watch on your wrist, we recommend a nylon pull-through strap. (Photo Credit: James Rupley/W.O.E.)

To start, your dive watch has to be good to go, meaning it runs reliably, accurately enough, and has adequate water resistance that has been checked by a capable watchmaker, ideally within the past year or so. Next, you’ll need to make sure it’s securely affixed to your wrist. To obviate the risk of loss due to spring bar failure, serious divers have long trusted nylon pull-through straps. It comes down to personal preference, but I wear my analog dive watch on my left wrist and my computer on my right. 

Even though the computer is my primary instrument, I can’t handle the feeling of wearing my “real” watch on my right wrist, which feels like wearing your pants backwards. If you don’t believe me, try it out… 

DIVE DIVE DIVE 

Sometimes the old ways are the best. (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens)

Upon entering the water, most dive boats will have you turn around at the surface and give the OK sign before descending. Just before I leave the surface, I rotate the bezel so that its zero index is aligned with the minute hand. My diving computer starts tracking the dive automatically, and at this stage, my dive watch is a backup used to double-check my bottom time. Because I paid attention when I got my scuba certs, I also have an understanding of the tables and roughly know how long I can stay at the depth to which I am headed. The more you know and all that. 

Throughout the dive, I glance at both my watch and the dive computer, using my watch to track my bottom time and primarily using my computer to monitor the pressure in my tank. When it’s time to ascend, I compare my watch and computer to ensure the bottom time is the same between the two. On the way up, I trust the diving computer to monitor my rate of ascent, but if there’s a safety or obligatory decompression stop, it’s another opportunity for my watch’s timing bezel to shine. 

Like many divers, the timing bezel on the Tudor Pelagos 39 has the first fifteen minutes finely demarcated. (Photo Credit: James Rupley/W.O.E.)

Many elapsed time bezels have the first fifteen minutes fully demarcated for precisely measuring shorter periods of time, like a safety stop, which is typically three minutes at fifteen feet or something similar. These finer graduations are also great for timing the individual legs of swims in underwater navigational scenarios. Most computers also have a secondary stopwatch function you can use to time things, but I much prefer the ease of rotating the bezel, which doesn’t require pushing buttons or remembering the finer points of my computer’s UX. 

Another area where a watch literally shines over a computer is with its luminescent material, assuming it's any good, providing at-a-glance legibility during night dives or when swimming through a wreck without looking for a computer’s backlight feature. 

Combat Divers & Underwater Construction 

A Navy SEAL surfaces from a dive wearing the G-Shock DW9052-1V. (Photo Credit: US Navy)

While diving computers typically rule the roost in recreational scuba diving, there are a few special scenarios where computers are rarely used, and a straightforward dive watch simply makes more sense. One such scenario is combat diving, which is typically undertaken with a pure oxygen rebreather, as opposed to a scuba tank filled with compressed air. Divers breathing pure oxygen are limited in their depth to around 10 meters or 33 feet. At those shallow depths, a diver can remain submerged essentially forever, meaning decompression calculations simply aren’t needed. 

A combat diver’s attack board is a place where a traditional dive watch is still used as a tool. (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens)

Since the 80s, Navy SEALs have trusted straightforward G-Shock models for this task, sometimes strapped onto an “attack board” that also holds a compass and depth gauge. Across the pond, the British Special Boat Service still requires its divers to wear an analog watch, either the CWC SBS or the Elliot Brown Holton, where the German Kampfschwimmer utilize the oil-filled Sinn UX S. 

Commercial divers, whose dive profile is managed by a supervisor on the surface, also generally don’t wear watches. However, at the pointy end of the underwater construction spear, there is saturation diving, where divers spend up to a month in a pressurized, helium-saturated environment while making a once daily bell ride to the work site on the ocean floor. 

Whether they have a helium escape valve or not, saturation divers often use watches. (Photo Credit: Phillips)

The Rolex Sea-Dweller and other watches with helium escape valves were developed for precisely this purpose. While the watches aren’t essential for tracking dive time, which is all but unlimited in saturation diving, divers in this environment still appreciate wearing a watch simply to know where they are in the course of their six-hour dive. 

Final Thoughts

At least for me, the dive watch will always be a part of my kit. (Photo Credit: Brock Stevens)

Today, using a dive watch for its intended purpose isn’t about rejecting technology or pretending it’s 1975; it’s about choosing to engage with your tools. Whether you’re a recreational scuba nerd, a combat diver, a serious commercial diver, or simply someone who just values the ritual and redundancy of setting your bezel before descending, the dive watch continues to provide a tactile connection to the art and science of diving that no computer can replace. It forces you to slow down, think through your profile, and actually participate in the process rather than just offloading everything to software and silicon.

That level of awareness matters underwater, and it’s part of why a well-worn dive watch feels less like gear and more like a trusted teammate. So whether you’re a seasoned diver or considering taking the plunge into your first scuba class, bring a dive watch with you and use it, not because you have to, but because you understand why generations of divers once did. As we like to say, Use Your Tools. 

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