New IWC Aquatimer - SSSHHH it's a secret!

Overview of the Aquatimer watch family 2009




Thanks to its robustness and dependability, the diver’s watch remains the sports watch of choice to this day and doubles as a reliable reserve as the indispensable underwater back up system, even if the dive computer now relieves the underwater sportsman of most of the necessary calculations. Once again, IWC Schaffhausen has extensively revised, both technically and aesthetically, its family of diver’s watches, first introduced in 1967 under the name Aquatimer and since then further developed on a number of occasions. This step coincides with a new partnership in support of environmental and marine conservation, which IWC has entered into with the Charles Darwin Foundation in Galapagos to mark the Darwin bicentennial year in 2009. One of the new Aquatimer models, the Aquatimer Chronograph Edition Galapagos Islands, is dedicated specifically to this commitment.

This new environmental commitment by IWC will start in the Darwin anniversary year – 2009 – in which the scientific world will celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of the great British biologist and behavioural scientist, Charles Darwin. He made his fundamental observations on the origin of species mainly on Galapagos, the unique archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, which was never in contact with the mainland at any time in the history of evolution. Specific animal and plant species not to be found anywhere else on earth evolved here through natural selection as a result of the differences in living conditions – even from one island to the next. This is also true of the marine life. Yet this “laboratory of evolution” is massively endangered by settlement, by illegal fishing and by the introduction of animals that are destroying the basis of existence of the indigenous species. The non-profit Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) has more than 100 interns actively engaged in the conservation of this NESCO World Heritage Site, which is on the “Red List”. IWC not only backs this cause in non-material ways, but also through a considerable financial contribution to support the CDF in this worthy endeavour.