Opinion: Why Don't Divers Wear Watches?

Admittedly, these guys are gnarlier divers than most but let's take a lesson here... watches help.  

In the early days of diving a wrist watch was as essential and a regulator.  Every diver had to buy and use a watch and understand the relationship between dive time and their safety with regards to absorbed nitrogen and the bends.  However, a quick trip on any dive boat will show the vast majority of scuba divers these days dive without a watch.  So why is the watch market full of highly engineered diver's watches advertised (apparently) to divers and their needs?  If no one needs these things for diving, why build them and continue to engineer them for more rigorous diving activity when most of these watches and their wearers will never dive deeper than the bottom of a pool?  It's a complicated question with more than one opinion oriented answer.  Let's dive deeper.

Divers (should) make and plan dives based on two critical pieces of information, depth and time.  These essential elements add up to make the dive "profile" which is usually expressed as depth/time (e.g. 100ft/25min).  The profile is then traditionally looked up in tables most of which are based on the US Navy's often updated and well trusted values.  However, this essential process and fundamental part of the act of diving is dying out.  Many divers have no understanding of their own dive profile and the consequences of diving outside it.

Formerly, and in my opinion still, essential diving gear.  

To take a step back, let's concentrate on two integral pieces of dive gear of yesteryear: the diver's watch and the depth gauge.  A diver, having planned the depth and time of a dive, would set the rotating bezel to the minute hand on his watch and observe his depth gauge as they completed a dive to ensure they stayed in compliance with the dive plan which would have been based on tables.  This active understanding of diving fundamentals avoids the "bends" or decompression sickness.  Without a watch and depth gauge there could be no safe dive.

Dive computer circa 1960's.  

However, in the early eighties companies like Scubapro began to design, experiment, and market wrist-worn diving computers which in most cases automatically track a diver's depth, time, decompression profile, necessary stops before surfacing, and sometimes even show remaining breathing gas.  They were revolutionary.  This allowed divers with a modest understanding of diving physiology and precautions to make dives more safely, confident their computers would tell them everything they needed to know.

Diving computers also use very complex logarithmic equations which allow them to compute dives more complicated than even a seasoned diver could.  Most dive tables are based on one depth and time but many divers would like to visit multiple depths and spend time at each during the course of a dive.  Computers made this process safer as they could keep up with changing depths and times and still give the diver accurate stop times and depths to avoid the bends.  The advent of computers spelled disaster for diving watches and many viewed and view watches as obsolete equipment with no purpose other than perhaps style or nostalgia.

I respectfully disagree.

Tracks bottom time and looks good doing it, the Doxa 1200t.  

I think diving with a watch and depth gauge is like driving and looking at the speedometer.  It's an essential part of the safe diving process.  The world's militaries have always required the use of a diver's watch for every diver on every dive, so why doesn't everyone wear a watch?  I understand the same information is available to me via dive computer but I think blindly trusting a computer is a little bit like sitting blindfolded in a self driving car which is to say the implications of the failure of technology are very serious.  Computers have a tendency to create a false sense of security in diving and to separate a person from very necessary understanding of their own dive profile.

If you are Namor please disregard this article.  

Unless you can breathe underwater (damn you, Namor!), diving is an inherently dangerous activity.  PADI, NAUI, SSI, and many other diving authorities will lead you to believe diving under the provisions provided in their training makes a diver safe and under the best of circumstances they're probably right.  Unfortunately, we do not always dive under the best of circumstances.  For this reason, we operate with redundant equipment.  Assuming a diver has a perfect dive and everything goes well they will only ever need one good regulator but everyone still dives with two and sometimes three air sources!  The reasons is that shit sometimes has a way of jumping in the direction of nearby fans and having a few options for tracking your dive is a smart move.

I suggest to the masses we dive with a watch, an analog depth gauge, a diving computer, and an understanding of the principles of diving.  That way if the computer malfunctions, we use it incorrectly, we lose it, or something else happens, we simply refer back to our watch, depth gauge, and what we learned by planning our dive with the tables ahead of time.  99% of the time our computer will work flawlessly and we won't need ancillary equipment but then 99% of the time we only need one regulator, right?  A better question is why not dive with a watch?  I like being safe.  I like knowing everything I can about a dive and the parameters of time and depth.  Plus, watches are badass and what diver doesn't like buying gear...