SERENE. Silent. Slow motion. An eerie stillness pervades the mysterious world underwater. Suddenly, a blur of colours whizzes past, darting from out of nowhere. It’s a school of fish piercing the murky canvas. And then the silence again. Serenity permeates.
But let not the calm fool you because anything can happen when you’re in the darkened depths of the world’s biggest aquarium. Ask any dive enthusiast and they’ll tell you that although diving deep is a rewarding challenge, it’s highly risky. Many divers have died for various reasons — ascending too fast, running out of air, or missing deco stops (a diver missing a required decompression stop increases the risk of developing decompression sickness). Thus, being super vigilant over one’s air consumption, deco limits and time (dive time and time to surface) is very important.
“I’ve probably spent more than 10,000 or maybe 12,000 hours in the water and traveled hundreds and hundreds of kilometres on the Great Barrier Reef underwater. It’s really important to have a reliable watch because, yes, it sounds dramatic, but your life really does depend on it. Time flies by and you have no idea how long you’ve been in the water until suddenly you find yourself shaking with cold,” begins Dr Gerry Goeden, a Malaysian-based marine ecologist who’s here in the tropical paradise of Langkawi as a guest speaker for the launch ceremony of French luxury timepiece brand, Bell & Ross’ latest dive instruments, two new versions of the BR 03-92 Diver — the BR03-92 Diver Blue and the BR03-92 Diver Bronze, the first square diving watches from the brand.
Continuing enthusiastically, Goeden says: “You can be in the depth of 12m and you can stay for 200 minutes. If you’re at 30m, you can stay for 10 minutes. You really need to keep track of the time. Honestly, there have been times when I’ve been underwater and suddenly wanted to check on the time only to find my watch full of water. Then panic sets in and you think, my God, I’m in trouble now. But I’ve been lucky.”
By the time you’re down past 30m, it’s easy to start making mistakes, adds the genial American who migrated to Australia at the age of 21 and worked on the Great Barrier Reef in fisheries research and marine park management. “The deepest I’ve dived is probably about 54m and that’s way past my safe limit because at that depth, the nitrogen and the air that you’re breathing start to have a narcotic effect (nitrogen narcosis). Every 15m is the equivalent of a martini!”
Importance of a good timepiece
His eyes lingering on the square, sporty-looking timepiece on his wrist — the BR03-92 Diver Blue — loaned to him especially for this launch event, Goeden adds: “It’s important to have a good watch that you can set a dial on that remembers because once you’ve had two or three martinis, you can’t remember!”
When he first started out, Goeden, the man behind The Andaman Langkawi’s Coral Garden Project, confides that he never had any fancy watch that went with him underwater. “What I had was ‘brand-less’ and it was a young lady in high school who gave it to me. I remember that it was a waterproof watch, at that time a pretty new kind of thing. It didn’t last very long. And neither did the romance, I might add!”
Since then, he’s had a series of watches “...and basically they’ve all been damaged, leaked, or cracked because I hit them against something. My advice is to buy the very best that you can get — something really durable, strong, and pressure resistant. It’s an investment and the best insurance you can get underwater,” says Goeden, who spent his formative years in Florida Keys, a coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida.
Suffice to say, this avid diver is supremely taken with Bell & Ross’ Diver collection. “Style doesn’t mean too much to me but certainly the two new versions joining the collection are both very attractive. What I like most is that they’re reasonably flat so you don’t feel like you’re wearing a golf ball on your wrist!”
Beyond its blue dial, rubber strap and aluminium insert on the bezel, the BR03-92 Diver Blue offers maximum legibility thanks to the White SuperLuminova-coated indices and the yellow hour hand. Underwater, the colours vanish one after the other due to the loss of light intensity. The yellow hour hand will therefore fade away to give precedence to the minute hand, which needs to be visible in order to ensure the diver’s safety.
Meanwhile, the BR03-92 Diver Bronze, issued as a limited edition of 999 pieces, evokes the historical roots of underwater exploration. Bronze, which makes up the case and bezel, is a material used in the past for diving helmets. The allusion to the origins of underwater adventures can be seen on the case-back — an engraving of a diver.
Lure of the underwater kingdom
When he was little, Goeden confides that he aspired to be an astronaut. His kindly eyes misting in recollection, he shares that he loved playing with rockets. “I had a plastic rocket that you could pump and shoot into the air. But of course, I never made it as an astronaut. The closest I can come to seeing a new place in the universe, a new planet, a new life, life that you could never imagine. is in the sea.”
His voice dropping, he adds: “The things that live in the sea... if you found them on Mars, you wouldn’t be surprised. And yet they’re right out here in the ocean for everyone to see and enjoy.” More than 72 per cent of the world is ocean, continues Goeden. “It’s the largest part of this world. We’ve become so used to living in the city that we think that’s what the world is all about. It’s not. The world is the sea. And we’re the outsiders.”
His eyes flashing with passion, Goeden confides that for him, going into the sea is like going home — in a way. “It’s where I come from. It’s everything. The whole evolution of life and all forms of life — it’s all there.”
Most people would either feel euphoria or fear when they enter the ocean’s depths. For Goeden, it’s the former. His face breaking into a gentle smile, he confides: “I started diving before there was diving. I have a false sense of security that I can survive anything and that I can get back to the surface in time and I can hold my breath for a long time. I’m very comfortable in the sea. The euphoria is what’s left when the fear goes away.”
It’s just an incredible world down there, he reiterates before adding: “In the shallow water, you see dancing sunlight, brilliant colours and colourful fishes darting every which way. And you can just sit still. They forget about you and they come out and swim around you, examining your face mask and nibbling on you... you become a part of their world.”
Once you go even deeper, the colours start to disappear. “It becomes a kind of blue,” shares Goeden, adding: “That’s because water filters out the reds and yellows and leaves behind the blues and the greens. It has a kind of melancholy about it. I like that sense of calm and solemnness.”
And when you go deeper still, you get that kind of ‘astronaut feeling’, he continues dreamily. “There’s a sense that the air has gotten thicker and when you breathe, it almost feels like you’re breathing liquid because it’s being compressed so much. It’s also very dull and dark. You feel like you’re walking around on a moonlit night. There are lots of shadows and things flitting around you.”
We both lapse into a companionable silence as I attempt to digest this magical world that Goeden is so enamoured with. Meanwhile, the charming scientist is lost in his own thoughts, his eyes sweeping the vista of the waters in the distance in silent reverence. The sound of waves crashing on the shore mingles with the din of raucous chatter of the diners around us. Turning to me with a gentle smile, Goeden, who’s soon to head to the East Coast for a special coral rehabilitation project, concludes: “It’s a very emotional thing for me. The ocean truly is everything.” intanm@nst.com.my
Go to www.bellross.com for details
Safety first
Not every watch can be an ‘underwater watch’. There are precise criteria which define a true diving watch. The ISO 6425 standard lists some obligatory technical parameters, which include water-resistance to a minimum depth of 100 metres; the presence of a unidirectional rotating bezel with a graduate scale, an operation indicator and luminescent markers; legibility in the dark, and anti-shock and anti-magnetic protection. The two versions launched — the BR03-92 Diver Blue and BR03-92 Diver Bronze meet these requirements, and go even further than the requisite minimums, featuring a water-resistance of 300 metres.