At some point or another, anyone with a taste for the ocean has likely donned a pair of fins and paddled around to see what's down there. And as it happens, there's all kinds of stuff down there — so much so that some people want to go deeper and stay down longer. They wind up buying tanks and regulators and wetsuits and going to exotic places to see ever more exotic stuff.

Scuba diving has exploded over the past 70 years with new gear and gimmicks coming to market all the time. Nonetheless, one piece of vital equipment has little changed over the years: the dive watch. Let's explore.

Of course, before all the gear people still swam in the ocean. Even in ancient times, coastal residents would hold their breath or breathe through a reed in order to gather food or escape from danger. Somewhere around the fourth century, it was discovered that a large cauldron turned upside down and forced underwater would hold enough air for a swimmer to take a few breaths inside the vessel before venturing out.

These primitive diving bells spawned further innovations over the years, including the invention of eye goggles in the 13th century, leather wetsuits in the 16th and air pumps in the 1770s. Dive helmets, rebreathers and other advances would follow.

The big breakthrough came in 1942 when wartime exigencies prompted French innovators Émile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau to come up with the first dive regulator. Hooked to a tank of compressed oxygen, this device released air on demand, untethering divers from a hose connected to the surface.

One year later, the now famous Aqua Lung entered the market and the modern scuba diving industry was born. It remains a technical sport with classes required to obtain certification and a regrettably steady list of casualties among both new and experienced divers. Nonetheless, diving enthusiasts will wax dreamily about drifting through the undersea world, and anyone who has tried it will be hard-pressed to disagree.

So that brings us to dive watches. Due to the critical need of monitoring one's time underwater while breathing compressed air, dive watches are a staple of every diver's kit. They need to be waterproof to a suitable depth, easily read in dim lighting conditions and include a rotating bezel with markings to allow for elapsed time or decompression data.

Most better watchmakers include such models in their lineups, and a few have become iconic. Among those are the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms (1953), the Rolex Submariner (1954) and the Doxa SUB 300. All were innovative but the Doxa has developed something of a cult following. Its high-visibility orange dial, spring-loaded bracelet and multi-functional bezel have since been widely copied, but nothing is quite like a Doxa.

Founded in Switzerland in 1910, the firm made its early mark by producing instrument panel clocks for airplanes and automobiles. It prospered and over time gravitated to making more high-performance sport watches.

When the Doxa SUB was first introduced, its advantages were obvious and soon caught the attention of Jacques Cousteau. He and his crew aboard the world-famous research vessel Calypso wore Doxas for years, and Cousteau was the original North American distributor of the brand.

More recently, Doxa was regularly mentioned by name in the novels of best-selling writer Clive Cussler. His books featured swashbuckling adventurer Dirk Pitt who saved the world with tedious regularity, all the while aided by his faithful watch.

With fans like that, who needs a lot of marketing?

Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are longtime residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he's the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at info@silverfishpress.com.