Seiko x PADI: A Decade Of Dive Watches And Ocean Conservation

If you’re interested in dive watches or have followed the watch market long enough, you’ve probably seen the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) logo on a Seiko dive watch. Over the past ten years, the partnership has produced some of the most recognizable variations in Seiko's Prospex catalog, often distinguished by blue dials, red accents, and more recently, ocean-inspired textures. Seiko's and PADI’s respective histories in diving reach much further back, beginning just a year apart in the mid-1960s. Both helped shape recreational diving as we know it, and their collaboration carries that experience into new watches, ocean conservation, and designs informed by the divers who use them.

Seiko entered the category in 1965 with the 62MAS, Japan’s first diver’s watch. Its 150 meters of water resistance, rotating timing bezel, and legible dial gave divers a practical way to track time underwater, establishing a foundation for the brand’s decades of work in the field. As scuba diving gained popularity, Seiko became a familiar name among professional and recreational divers alike.

The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) arrived a year later. Founded in Illinois in 1966 by scuba equipment salesman John Cronin and educator and swimming instructor Ralph Erickson, the organization grew out of frustration with the dive training available at the time. The pair felt existing certification agencies made learning to dive unnecessarily difficult, with instruction that lacked professionalism and modern teaching methods. Their answer was a more accessible, structured approach that helped PADI grow into the world’s largest diving organization, with courses delivered through a global network of instructors, dive centers, and resorts.

The two paths formally came together in 2016, when Seiko and PADI announced a partnership and introduced two distinctly different Prospex divers. What followed has extended well beyond those first watches, from funding underwater debris cleanup to putting new designs in the hands of PADI instructors for testing. This year, PADI’s 60th anniversary and the partnership’s tenth bring the story back to a familiar Seiko shape with a new limited-edition Turtle.

The first two PADI editions arrived in 2016, bringing the dive organization’s red-and-blue colors to two very different Seiko designs. One leaned on the brand’s mechanical dive-watch history, while the other combined a familiar protective case with its motion-powered quartz technology.

The mechanical option was the SRPA21, built around the rounded cushion case collectors affectionately know as the Turtle. Its signature broad hands, prominent markers, and crown at 4 o’clock carried forward the look of Seiko’s 1970s divers, while a blue dial and red-and-blue timing bezel gave the watch its PADI identity. Inside the 45mm steel case was the automatic Caliber 4R36, familiar from other Seiko mechanical divers.

The SUN065 offered something different and less traditional. Its Kinetic GMT movement used wrist motion to generate electricity for a quartz timekeeping system, combining the convenience of a self-charging watch with a second-time-zone display for travel. The two-part case followed Seiko’s familiar “Tuna” design, with a protective outer covering inspired by the 1975 original.

Over the following decade, PADI editions spread across the Prospex catalog, including solar-powered and analog-digital models. The SNE575 brought the signature to a relatively compact 38.5mm solar diver, while the SPB501 carried it into the 1965 Heritage Diver family. The latter pairs a 40mm case and 300 meters of water resistance with an emerald-green gradient dial and an additional fabric strap made from upcycled fishing nets.

The designs have broadened along with the watches. Red-and-blue bezels remain closely associated with the partnership, but later editions have explored globe-patterned dials, turquoise accents, and colors drawn from the view beneath the surface. Collectors can now choose a PADI edition across several Prospex families, with different case sizes, movements, and designs.

Ocean conservation has been part of the partnership since its introduction, when Seiko pledged support for Project AWARE. Founded as a PADI initiative in 1989, AWARE had spent decades promoting environmental education, underwater cleanups, and marine protection before becoming the PADI AWARE Foundation in 2021. Seiko’s wider conservation work also included support for the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, announced in 2018.

In 2021, Seiko became an official partner of the foundation’s Marine Debris Program, donating a portion of proceeds from its Prospex Save the Ocean collection. At the center of that program is Dive Against Debris, launched in 2011, which asks divers to remove underwater trash and record what they find. Those reports help build a database that researchers and policymakers can use to understand underwater pollution and inform waste-management measures.

PADI reports that divers have logged more than 2.5 million pieces of debris through the initiative. Seiko’s support has helped fund local conservation work, including 21 Dive Against Debris events across seven countries during AWARE Week in September 2024. 

(Other watchmakers have supported PADI’s conservation work, too. Doxa released a Project AWARE-branded diver in 2008, with a portion of sales benefiting the organization. Blancpain’s partnership, announced in 2022, focuses on Adopt the Blue, above, and the expansion of marine protected areas. Seiko’s relationship combines its marine debris support with the ongoing development of PADI-signed watches.)

That development has included testing by PADI instructors. In October 2021, instructors tested the solar analog-digital Prospex SNJ035, powered by Caliber H855, on dives from both boats and beaches. According to Seiko, their feedback helped determine the final specifications, including a digital display that was easier to see and an alarm that was easier to hear underwater.

With a decade of watches, conservation work, and diver feedback behind the partnership, Seiko returned to one of its starting points for this year’s anniversary release. The Prospex Diver’s Watch PADI 60th Anniversary Limited Edition, Ref. HBB002, marks both PADI’s 60th anniversary and ten years of collaboration, updating the original SRPA21 formula with new materials and an anniversary dial.

The connection is immediately apparent in the blue-and-red palette, this time drawn from PADI’s anniversary logo. A globe motif stretches across the blue dial, with red accents at 6 o’clock and on the seconds hand. The blue ceramic timing bezel carries the color onto the case, giving the familiar Turtle a more cohesive look than the original edition’s red-and-blue bezel.

The rounded steel case and screw-down crown at 4 o’clock preserve the shape that helped make the first PADI Turtle recognizable. At 45mm across, 47.7mm lug to lug, and 13.2mm thick, it remains a substantial watch, though the relatively short lug-to-lug measurement helps put that diameter in perspective. Water resistance is rated to 200 meters, while the ceramic bezel insert and sapphire crystal bring useful scratch resistance to the established design. The crystal also has an internal anti-reflective coating and a magnifier over the day-date display.

Inside is the automatic Caliber 4R36, the same movement used in the SRPA21. Running at 3 Hz, it offers approximately 41 hours of power reserve, manual winding, and hacking seconds. Seiko supplies a steel bracelet with a clasp extender and an additional PADI-signed, accordion-style silicone strap.

Released in July 2026, the HBB002 is limited to 8,000 pieces and priced at $750. The PADI range has expanded considerably since 2016, but the anniversary Turtle keeps a direct connection to one of the watches that started the partnership. You can learn more at seikowatches.com.