Great white dial
An estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year for their meat, fins, liver, or gill rakers, according to researchers. IWC Schaffhausen is drawing attention to their plight with its new Aquatimer Chronograph Edition ‘Sharks.’
The limited-edition dive watch comes bundled with a copy of Taschen’s Sharks by Michael Muller, an extra-large coffee-table book depicting all species of sharks in hundreds of breath-taking photographs. The photographer, best known for his celebrity portraits, has travelled the world to shoot the predators – capturing them with a 1,200-watt underwater strobe lighting rig – without the protection of a cage. The watch-and-book combo is a fitting milestone in IWC’s seven-year-old collaboration with the Charles Darwin Foundation, which has helped focus its charitable efforts on ocean conservation.
The Aquatimer special edition comes in a 44 mm stainless-steel case on a black rubber strap with a stainless-steel pin buckle. Its sleek grey dial, which includes a dusting of luminescent coating to optimise readability, mimics the colour of most sharks. The caseback, however, is what sets the timepiece apart from other dive models; it features an engraving depicting a group of hammerhead sharks swimming.
“This is a true functional instrument,” IWC creative director Christian Knoop says, singling out the model’s IWC-manufactured 89365 calibre, a mechanical movement featuring a date display, a stopwatch function, a flyback function, and small hacking seconds. “It’s one of the most proven and reliable movements we have in our range,” Knoop added. Designed to withstand dive depths greater than 300m, the watch is equipped with a patented system consisting of an inner and outer bezel; the inner bezel can only be adjusted in an anticlockwise direction. The model’s power reserve lasts 68 hours.
Limited to 500 pieces, the Aquatimer Chronograph Edition ‘Sharks’ comes with a collector’s edition of Michael Muller’s Sharks that is signed by the photographer and packaged inside a metal cage designed to evoke the iron cages used by divers swimming with sharks. It retails for US$12,200 (RM54,442).
