The Citizen Aqualand 40th Anniversary: An In Depth Look At A High Water Mark For Modern Dive Watches

The Citizen Aqualand is at first glance, an unlikely candidate for a cult watch. Born in 1985 and called the “diving robot” in contemporary advertisements, the Aqualand preceded the official launch of the Promaster family of watches by four years, and was the latest development in water resistant watches from Citizen, going all the way back to the 1959 Parawater, which Citizen famously tested by suspending the watches underneath buoys set adrift in the ocean to study currents (one of the buoys, watch still attached, made it all the way across the Pacific to Manzanita, Oregon, where it washed ashore in 1966). The Aqualand was, however, a first – specifically, it was the first diver’s watch with an electronic depth gauge, and it had a whole plethora of additional features, designed to make the inherently hazardous activity of scuba diving as safe as possible. Functions included constant measurement of depth, dive time measurement, maximum depth memory, a dive log capable of storing information on previous dives, including maximum depth and dive time, a rapid ascent alarm, and a sensor which would automatically switch the watch into dive mode when immersed in water. Incredibly sophisticated for its time, the Aqualand was the first of a whole line of electronic dive watches from Citizen – but it was also the last purpose built, multifunction dive watch intended as a primary diving tool, appearing just as the first versions of modern dive computers were hitting the market.

This year is the 40th anniversary of the original Aqualand, although there have been several models in Citizen’s catalog over the years, including the original model, CO22, the two tone Co23, and a high end model in blackened titanium with gold, the Co29, which was worn by none other than everyone’s favorite taciturn grizzled French everyman and tough guy, Jean Reno, in the movie, Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue) which was released in 1988. Until quite recently, a model more or less identical to the original was in the catalog – JP2000-08E. The new model is also part of the JP20XX series, which began production in 1997, it’s the  JP-2008-06E.

The Aqualand seems to be having a little bit of a moment right now, and I think the coverage by Jason Heaton has had a lot to do with increased awareness of the importance of the Aqualand in the history of dive watches. He’s called it, on Swimpruf, his Substack, “the last great diver’s watch” and has also written, “While dive computers gained momentum and reputation, the Aqualand became, in effect, the last dive watch built for, and bought by, real divers who needed a tool for timing dives.” The Aqualand, on this view, represents the peak of the evolution of the diver’s watch before its role as a practical and, more importantly, essential instrument in sport, professional, and military diving, began to be taken over by digital dive computers.

The 40th Anniversary Aqualand has all the functionality of its predecessors and operation, once you are acclimated to the watch, is straightforward; I expect using the dive functions would come pretty naturally to anyone who’s done any actual diving, since they’d be familiar with the rationale for the dive functions. This is, like its predecessors, an analog digital watch with electronic depth gauge, an elapsed time one way sixty click bezel, and in this instance,  a case in blackened stainless steel, rated to 200 meters, with a screw down one piece caseback. The original had a caseback held in place by six, count ’em six, screws and the movement was very power hungry, requiring three batteries.

The newer models, including, I presume, the 40th Anniversary model (I haven’t had the back off to check and the manual just says, “lithium battery”) appears to use the CR 2016 lithium cell, which is a pretty big, 20mm x 1.6mm battery – this YouTube video shows the battery in situ, it takes up a significant percentage of the diameter of the movement.  Citizen says that, if you use the daily alarm, dive for an hour fifty times a year, and use the depth alarm and dive time alarm on all 50 dives, you will get two years of battery life.

The bezel might seem unnecessary given all the functions connected with the electronic depth gauge, including timing operations, but in addition to the fact that it never hurts to have a backup system, the bezel is required by ISO 6425 and even in a watch like the Aqualand 40th, it’s simple prudence to have a failsafe. Jason Heaton points out in his Substack story that he always wears a dive watch on the wrist opposite his dive computer as the latter can and do fail – twice, in his experience, which is not a whole lot but I imagine it only needs to happen once for you to want it never to happen again. The bezel clicks on the JP-2008-06E are pretty sharp – you’re going to feel yourself pushing past each one as you turn the bezel – but it’s good tactile feedback, especially if you’re wearing gloves.

The star of the show, functionally and stylistically, is the electronic depth gauge. The actual gauge consists of a metal membrane, underneath which is a piezoelectric sensor which converts deformation in the shape of the membrane into an electrical signal, which in turn is converted by the circuit board into depth measurement. Pressure increases linearly with depth – conveniently, a meter of depth equals 0.1 atmospheres almost exactly; 10 meters is equivalent to 1 atmosphere, 100 meters, to 10 atmospheres, and so on. The membrane of the depth gauge is protected from damage by a cover plate.

The depth gauge as well as the overall design of the entire watch, gives it a purposeful, functional, earnest, no-nonsense authenticity which for all that it’s an anachronism, is still enormously appealing, and still practical. You can of course, still use this watch as it was intended to be used. If you are interested in the history of the Aqualand as a practical tool watch, everyone’s favorite ex-CIA officer turned watch enthusiast, Watches Of Espionage, recently published “Citizen Aqualand: An Underrated Legend In Military Service,” which makes for some gripping reading, even if, or maybe especially if, you’re an armchair diver. The story starts with a shot of “Tony,” a British SBS (Special Boat Service) operator, wearing an Aqualand in Afghanistan in 2001, and goes on from there.

As I said earlier – don’t lose the manual. You start with setting the analog and digital times, which are two separate operations; the screw down crown at 4:00 sets the analog time, and the buttons, labeled Mode, Select, and Set, are used to set the digital time and date. Synchronizing the displays is straightforward; the analog seconds hack, so I just set mine to the NIST signal at time.gov, synchronized the digital time, set the date, and I was good to go.

Here is a breakdown of the functions of the JP-2008-06E:

• Daily Alarm
• 1/100th second chronograph (up to 99 minutes and 59 seconds elapsed time) with split time
• Dive Log Mode. Started automatically by the pressure sensor at the start of a dive; can also be started manually. Up to four dives can be logged; each gets a date stamp, and each log records dive start time, dive time, and maximum depth.
• Depth Alarm. The depth alarm will beep for fifteen seconds when you reach the set depth. If you exceed the set depth, the alarm will sound every fifteen seconds for one minute; it’ll stop when you return to the set depth.
• Diving Alarm. Sounds when the elapsed time for which the alarm is set, is reached.
• Depth Meter Display, and Dive Time Display. Both are shown digitally and you can switch between the two with the Set button at 2:00 (this is the only button, the manual warns, that should be pressed underwater, lest you turn your Aqualand into a mini-aquarium).
• Two Warning Modes. The Ascent Speed alarm will go off if your ascent speed exceeds 1.5 meters per ten seconds, lest you turn your body fluids into seltzer water in your eagerness to return to terra firma. The Abnormal Depth alarm will go off if there is a sudden change in depth that meets or exceeds 4 meters in one second.

The strap is a quite muscular affair – thick, but reasonably flexible; it’s made of a plant-based polyurethane called BENEBiOL. The watch comes with a wetsuit extension which is simplicity itself – it’s just a strip of vented rubber with a hole for the tang of the main buckle at one end, and an additional buckle at the other end. The only thing I miss is the no decompression limits table that used to be printed on the Aqualand strap, although you can buy OEM straps with the table (which is tempting). The no deco limits table basically shows you how long you can stay at a give depth and still be able to surface without doing decompression stops – at 30 meters, according to the old Aqualand strap, you have 25 minutes to noodle around before you have to start doing decompression stops on the way up.

The potential gotcha with no deco limits tables are that they’re not exact – everyone’s body takes on neutral gasses from breathing mixtures (nitrogen, for instance, which gets dissolved in the blood as you breathe compressed air at depth) at slightly different rates, so the tables are generally calculated on the conservative side. The other gotcha is that you still have residual nitrogen in your blood even after you surface, which takes time to dissipate, and which you have to take into account if you’re planning on diving more than once in a given day.

You would expect the Aqualand JP-2008-06E to excel when it comes to visibility and you would be right.

There’s so much lume filling the dial and hands that this is one of those watches that will startle you with how much light it’s emitting if you go inside after a quick walk. The general design of the indexes and hands means that you have essentially zero chance of misreading the time, and I always think one of the joys of a proper tool watch is how it can light up the room at night.

The whole idea of a diver’s watch with a depth gauge would seem to be a natural one, but surprisingly enough there aren’t that many out there. Jason Heaton, in his articles, has mentioned Favre-Leuba and Aquadive as vintage makers of mechanical depth gauge watches (the latter is an interesting watch; it has a electric movement with a magnetically impulsed balance) and of course, there are the IWC Deep One, Two and Three models (Deep Three is in the current catalog) as well as the X-Fathoms from Blancpain. Depth gauges in diver’s watches are of course potentially problematic as the represent another possible point of ingress, and historically (pre-dive computer) divers usually used separate depth gauges worn on the wrist.

You might be wondering why we’re covering a watch which is in terms of price and market position, an outlier in comparison to what we usually cover and the answer is pretty simple: it’s interesting historically and technically (for reasons which Jason Heaton has articulated so well) and for anyone interested in the history of diver’s watches, it provides invaluable context for understanding the genre, past, present, and future. It offers a unique design and wearing experience as well, and, as we know from Mr. Watches of Espionage, it has had its usefulness endorsed by what we are sometimes pleased to call, hard men in hard places. It’s from a company which has written some defining chapters in the history of the dive watch as well, and here’s the kicker – this is a $595 watch. It offers utilitarian, even brutalist charm, to rival anything else on the market and functionality not really available in this form factor anywhere else.

There is a bit of a tendency nowadays to think that the interest inherent in a watch must somehow scale with its price, but of course, that is only partly true, and though price and real horological content can seem increasingly disconnected, and even alienating, I think the Aqualand 40th Anniversary, in exchange for just a battery change and gasket check every few years, is a lifetime’s worth of genuine enthusiast bang for the buck.

The Citizen Promaster Aqualand 40th Anniversary Limited Edition: case, 50.7mm x 14.8mm; grey media blasted stainless steel and gold PVD, with analog-digital display; 60 click one way bezel; water resistance 200 meters. Movement, caliber C520, with time, date, 1/100 sec chronograph, dive functions including dive time and depth meter, auto-on or manual start dive log recording up to four dives, safety alarms. Price, $595; limited edition of 5800 pieces world wide. See it at Citizenwatch.com.