Look at the wrist of most any scuba diver, and you’ll see a dive watch. Those dive timers are handy for keeping track of how long you stay at a particular depth in the water. And some watches are fancy enough to compliment the look of any formal event attendee.

Have you looked at the watches that divers can buy? Some of those things are flashy aren’t they?

I have a stingray dive watch that’s classy enough to wear to the governor’s ball. It has a silver case and band, with twin gold bars mounted along the band. The watch is a chronometer style with hour, minute, and second dials. Those dials, along with the hands and the numbers, are gold. The background of the dial is black.

I only wear that watch when I dress up to go out. In fact, I’ve never worn it on a dive. But I do enjoy its sophisticated style, and I feel good when I wear it. I also have a sense of pride knowing that the watch works in water over three hundred feet deep.

For everyday wear I sport a Freestyle with a silver case. The dial is a night vision white with gold inlayed numbers and second, minute, and hour hands. The original band of this watch was leather. It broke some time ago, and I replaced it with a Velcro band that is functional, and still looks good.

On occasion I do wear the Freestyle watch while diving.

Most dives I wear a Casio G-Shock. I only use this watch for diving now, and only for tracking minutes at each depth. I lost the mode select button some while back, and sealed the hole with adhesive. I can’t change the settings anymore because of that. And I don’t even remember how many broken bands that watch suffered. I just keep replacing them.

But that watch works great for counting the minutes.

Yes, you have a lot of options when it comes to dive watches. Some are classy enough that a diver hesitates to expose them to depths deeper than a couple feet.

And there’s the thought that a fancy gold watch, flashing in the sun’s rays, pretty much looks like a fishing lure to a barracuda.

A dive watch has a more important role than acting as bling at a formal dinner though.

Divers must know how long they stay at each depth during their dive. Stay longer than three minutes at one hundred feet, and you have a health situation. When you stay at one depth beyond certain time limits you need to make safety, or decompression, stops on the way back to the surface.

Water pressure increases as you dive deeper. That pressure pushes against the nitrogen in your body, holding it in. Our body’s design is for existing in the air pressure we feel on land. As we breathe we inhale nitrogen along with the oxygen that keeps us alive and well. The pressure of the air is light enough that the nitrogen quickly escapes through our pores.

At depth during a dive nitrogen doesn’t escape so quickly. It builds up in our body, forming little bubbles. As we ascend the water pressure decreases, and those bubbles try to rush out of our pores.

Come up too fast and that bubble rush is like opening a can of soda pop after giving it a vigorous shaking. It pretty much explodes out of our skin.

And that my friend can kill you.

We take decompression stops (stop and hover at specified depths for a few minutes) to allow the nitrogen to safely outgas. It keeps us from getting the bends.

In order to keep track of our time at each depth, and how long we stop for safety, we wear dive watches. They’re one of our most important life support tools.

When you look for a scuba diver gift consider dive watches. You can buy one fancy enough that any diver will proudly wear it. But make sure it’s functional for scuba diving. It might just save your diver’s life one dive.