Edox have a new dive watch which salutes the North Sea exploration of the late 1970s and makes a little payback to the oceans too. This 43mm dive watch has a real vintage feel about it, with a plain black dial, superluminova and a 320mm depth rating. At 1490 euros it isn’t too expensive either.

1978 was a big year for North Sea oil, although the first test wells were drilled back in the 60s. It took the oil price shock of 1973 to spur on the UK and Norwegian governments to drill faster and deeper, plus build the pipelines to get it ashore. All that required brave divers to work at serious depth to help with construction, testing and make sure rigs kept on pumping. Divers in those days could make over £300 a week, which was an astonishing wage compared to a typical farm worker on about £25 per week, although the conditions in the North Sea were a bit bleaker than a turnip field in Lincolnshire. Much of the work on the UK side was undertaken by US oil specialist companies, plus the big oil companies and huge investment from the UK governments of the mid-70s.

Crude oil began to come ashore to Scotland in 1975, and although the Tartan Army, a sort of SNP-inspired IRA faction, threatened to blow up the pipeline, it has continued to flow ever since.

Here’s the word from the press office;

The North Sea 1978 timepiece from boutique Swiss watchmaker Edox marks this amazing achievement and pays homage to the classic, vintage Edox dive watches of the 1960s and 70s such as the legendary Delfin. These divers helped unlock undersea riches for Norway that paved the way for the country to invest in socially and environmentally friendly projects in a Sovereign wealth fund.

Edox is proud to be the official watch partner of these heroic North Sea Divers and the 43mm North Sea 1978 is a rugged, feature-packed sports timepiece that can be worn anytime, anywhere.

Naturally, it is exceptionally water-resistant; to 320m in fact, matching that epic 1978 dive to the metre. A stainless-steel case, coated in black Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) for extra toughness, houses the Calibre 80 automatic movement. The hands and indices are coated with Superluminova for enhanced visibility at night or in the water and the case back features the North Sea Divers’ official logo – a stylised dive helmet – and the words ‘The Inverse Moon Landing’.