With the holidays fast approaching perhaps you can use a scuba gift idea for your diving friend, or loved one. Why not choose one of those scuba gifts that’s guaranteed to delight your diver. And a gift that doubles as a necessary piece of dive safety equipment on every dive?

Scuba divers must track how long they stay at specific depths when they’re exploring the underwater realm. As a diver descends the water pressure increases. That pressure squeezes against the body, and makes little bubbles of nitrogen start forming inside. The longer your diver stays at one depth level those bubbles keep forming.

As a scuba diver starts toward the surface water pressure drops off. The falling water pressure lets those bubbles start escaping from the body.

The idea is to let those bubbles leave the body slowly. If the diver floats to the surface too fast the outside pressure from the water backs away from the bubbles, and they start expanding before they can get out of the body. That creates a condition we call “The Bends,” and it can kill the diver if emergency treatment doesn’t happen soon enough.

When the diver ascends too fast those expanding bubbles are like when you blow up a balloon, and don’t stop. They keep getting bigger, and bigger, until they suddenly explode from over inflation.

To keep from letting those bubbles expand too fast, and to big, divers make safety stops along their way back to the surface. We have certain depths where we stop. At those depths we hover for a calculated space of time to release the excess nitrogen safely, so it doesn’t hurt us.

The length of time a diver stays at each safety stop depends on the amount of time spent at the deepest depth of the dive.

The scuba diver must have a means to monitor the times spent at depth, and how long to stay at hover for safety.

It’s a survival kind of thing.

That’s where my scuba gift idea for your diver comes in.

A dive watch lets the diver track the time at depth, and make sure the safety stop isn’t too short. Scuba diving watches are ideal life sustaining scuba gear. Manufacturers design them to withstand the water pressure to certain depths without leaking.

Some dive watches rated to how many atmospheres divers can safely wear them to. (One atmosphere is equal to 33-feet.) Some dive watches rate by the number of meters. (One meter equals approximately three feet.)

You’ll find dive watches for as low as $60.00. Those normally rate to about 60-meters, or about 180-feet of depth.

The Rolex Deep Sea watch works to a depth of 3,900-meters (12,000-feet). Prices for the Deep Sea run $10,000 and higher.

Unless your diver works in the diving industry other than sport diving the Rolex isn’t necessary. Sport, or recreational, divers don’t dive deeper than 130-feet. A dive watch that works to 180-feet is most likely plenty. Although just as a heads up, when I look at dive watches for myself I don’t consider any rated below 10-atmospheres (330-feet).

But maybe that’s just me.

Another thing I shop for in a dive watch is how it looks. Your diver will wear the watch for on land outings too. You might consider something stylish enough that the scuba diver in your life is proud to wear it on any occasion.

Dive watches rated to 330-feet or more, and an attractive look, are the kind of underwater time pieces that I’m most pleased with.

If you’re looking for a scuba gift idea for that diver in your life, you can’t go wrong when you select a scuba diving watch.