Photo © Courtesy of Seiko
The story of Seiko began in 1881, when entrepreneur Kintaro Hattori opened a shop selling and repairing watches and clocks in central Tokyo. In 1965, Seiko produced its first Japan-made diver’s watch, a milestone model. Waterproof to a depth of 150 meters, the watch was designed to withstand high water pressure.
Upon receiving a letter from a professional diver, Seiko engineers were shocked to hear how much strain was put on a watch by the athletes, diving to depths of 350 meters. Seiko took on the challenge, crafting the world’s first diver’s watch that would be resistant to helium and legible at great depths. Today, Seiko proudly maintains the global standard for dive watches, preserving tradition and building on five decades of innovation through the Prospex collection.
Now, Seiko is taking on a new challenge: saving the oceans.
PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, is the world’s largest ocean exploration and diver organization, with a global network of 6,600 dive centers and resorts and over 128,000 professional members. PADI enables people worldwide to seek adventure and save the ocean through underwater education, life-changing experiences, and travel, issuing more than 28 million certificates to date. The long-standing partnership between Seiko and PADI works to spread awareness about ocean conservation efforts and teach valuable lessons about marine health.
Undeniably The Way the World Learns to Dive®, PADI combines dive training with a longstanding commitment to environmental conservation, leading the way for millions of people to actively explore, steward, and protect the ocean through courses and partnerships with like-minded, mission-driven organizations. PADI embodies a global commitment to ocean health with its mission to create a billion torchbearers to explore and protect the ocean. With the PADI AWARE Foundation, PADI’s publicly funded non-profit, their mission is to drive local action for global ocean conservation through citizen science, public policy and community grants.
Seiko Watch Corporation is embarking on a new partnership with PADI® PADI AWARE Foundation’s Marine Debris Program to rid the ocean of marine debris. Seiko is taking the plunge by donating a portion of the proceeds from the Seiko Prospex Save the Ocean collection to give back to the diver’s community that is removing and reporting marine debris in aquatic environments.
At the heart of the PADI AWARE Foundation™ Marine Debris Program is the largest underwater citizen science movement and clean-up initiative: Dive Against Debris®.
Over 70,000 divers have contributed to building the world’s most comprehensive aquatic database on seafloor debris. The database is shared with NGOs, governments, and local communities in order to advocate change and work towards informing and creating long-term waste management solutions. Divers Against Debris have removed over two million pieces of debris and have aided over 10,000 entangled marine animals. Their goal is to reduce marine debris in targeted countries by 50% by 2030. Seiko is proud to sponsor the global PADI dive community’s work to clean up and prevent marine debris for a cleaner, healthier ocean planet.
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Built to meet the challenge of the oceans’ depths. In 1983, Seiko 600m diver’s watch was attached to the research submersible Shinkai 2000 to test its durability. It exceeded expectations withstanding water pressure at a remarkable depth of 1,062m. Today’s Prospex diver’s watches are also built to challenge the oceans’ depths. Experience counts.
