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Daring Jobs Episode 1: Under Pressure

Explore the submerged life of a commercial diver, where they push the boundaries of what human beings can accomplish.

Below the surface of the sea, everything changes. Go deeper and the light quickly dissipates and pressure consistently builds. Once you’re more than a few metres down, it’s no longer a welcoming environment. But that’s exactly what makes it so alluring, so enticing. It’s a place of mystery and a place where we can push the boundaries of what human beings can explore and accomplish.

There are few places more threatening to a mechanical wristwatch than under the sea. Even during casual use, lesser watches can succumb to the challenges presented by these conditions – and commercial applications push things even further. The hard shocks and extreme temperatures experienced by commercial divers are a recipe for disaster when it comes to mechanical watches.

Commercial diving has about as much in common with casual scuba diving as piloting a racecar does with driving to the grocery store. For a commercial diver, life underwater can last days or weeks, not minutes or hours, and a special mix of gasses including oxygen, helium, and nitrogen is required to prevent decompression sickness upon surfacing (this is known as saturation diving).

Sometimes diving tanks have to be foregone altogether, with divers connected to the surface – and their air supply – via a long “umbilical” cord, a literal lifeline to the world above. And instead of enjoying the beautiful scenery and admiring wildlife, these divers are keeping ships afloat, conducting scientific experiments, and generally working as hard and efficiently as they can to accomplish their goals in these hostile environments.

Luckily, the Tudor Pelagos is up for the challenge. It’s defined by its lightweight and robust titanium case, hyper-legible dial and bezel with matte finishing, and signature titanium bracelet with its expanding clasp and innovative extension system. These are all invaluable features for a diver welding the hull of a ship upside down, with the surface shimmering dozens of metres above them.

An all-important helium escape valve on the left side of the Pelagos’s case completes the package. This ensures there are no unwanted surprises for a deep-sea saturation diver on their way back to the surface as gas tries to rapidly escape from the watch. A compromised watch is a useless watch, and that’s simply unacceptable.

So, whether your office is a pressurized underwater habitat or a spare bedroom in your home, the Tudor Pelagos can stand up to anything you throw its way – and much, much more.

Watches mentioned