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Yeah, um, no. If you open that under water you will be buying a new watch.
I'll be ignorant on this topic, but my guess is you dont have to open the valve when you at 50 atm below water (490m down) humans never went don below 600m, do you think they've used mechanical watches ? When i dive below 100m I have CL rebirther and at least two computers on my hands synchronised ... lamer ...
99.999999% of divers will never need a helium escape to begin with. The value for most is the "cool factor". My point was just: don't open it under water, no matter what the ad copy says.
Then read it up ...
The helium release valve is one of the most overused and misunderstood components found on watches today. While it does no harm to include one, its function is extremely specific and only matters at all if you happen to be a commercial diver (that bothers to wear a watch). It's high time we cut through the mythology, so here's the low down on the helium release valve.
Brands large and small continue drilling extra holes in their cases and then touting the extreme capabilities of these watches, often erroneously associating the component with deeper depths and safer diving. Meanwhile, many naïve watch buyers assume that a dive watch without a helium release valve is somehow inferior and they therefore seek out this feature above others.
Unlike a fusée-and-chain or a tourbillon—complex horological advances whose aim is to improve timekeeping precision—a helium release valve is a simple mechanism: a one-way pressure relief valve typically consisting of a strong spring, a plug, and a good rubber gasket. Nothing too complicated there.
When Rolex developed their patented “gas relief valve” for the Sea Dweller in the 1960s at the suggestion of U.S. Navy diver Bob Barth, the dive watch was a legitimate instrument, used right alongside depth and pressure gauges. Rolexes were being used by the SEALAB and COMEX divers and others in the burgeoning field of commercial diving, when diving bells and underwater habitats were just coming into use. The divers found that the crystals were exploding off their watches as they rose in decompression chambers due to the buildup of helium gas in the watch after extended stays inside the dry pressurized habitats used for commercial diving. The valve was a no-nonsense solution to this problem.
According to DOXA, its Conquistador dive watch (1969) was the first watch equipped with a helium release valve to be sold to the general public, while the Rolex Sea Dweller remained mainly a commercial tool. There is some irony to the fact that DOXA’s version of this valve was included on a watch that pioneered the no decompression limit bezel, which was created to help recreational divers avoid the very decompression that was causing the crystals to pop off commercial divers’ watches after weeklong “soaks” in helium environments. Commercial divers have little use for a 60-minute timing bezel during a multi-hour shift.
Too often we read hyperbolic ad copy, press releases, and watch reviews that tout the inclusion of a helium release valve on a watch as somehow endowing it with the ability to go deeper or to be a more serious diving instrument. However, unless you’re one of the very few people doing commercial diving, adding a release valve does nothing more than add another hole to the case - a counter-intuitive move in my mind. In fact, it runs counter to the “everything you need and nothing you don’t” aesthetic that I find so appealing about rugged sport watches in the first place.
A helium release valve does not make a watch capable of diving to deeper depths. It was designed to function in a dry, pressurized environment and only deals with the gases in the air, not with the water in which the timepiece is submerged during diving. I am not saying brands shouldn’t put them on their dive watches, but let’s be realistic about their function, their use, and why they are or are not being included in the first place.
STILL IT IS A GREAT DEAL AND I BOUGHT ONE TODAY !