In 2023, Blancpain celebrates several landmark anniversaries: 70 years of the Fifity Fathoms; two decades of the contemporary Fifty Fathoms as well as Blancpain Ocean Commitment; and 10 years of the Gombessa Expeditions.
The Fifty Fathoms is the epitome of a diving watch because the original was devised by former CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter, who was a passionate diver.
Current president and CEO Marc A. Hayek is also an avid diver, who brought the Fifty Fathoms back to life in 2003.
Throughout the year, Blancpain has released the Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3 to mark the milestone.
In September, the 70th anniversary celebrations culminated in Cannes with a photo exhibition on the Croisette, and a diving and snorkelling activity in the Mediterranean Sea to retrace the origin of the Fifty Fathoms.
Back in the early 1950s, scuba diving was in its infancy and Fiechter was a member of the Club Alpin Sous-Marin. During a scuba dive off the south coast of France, he ran out of air and realised the importance of keeping track of time underwater.
Blancpain is the founding partner of PADI's Adopt The Blue.
Surviving the dive, Blancpain's CEO set his heart on devising a reliable timing instrument that would later defined characteristics of the diving watch genre.
His design included a lockable rotating bezel. By placing the index opposite the minute hand at the start of a dive, the elapsed time could be read with the minute hand against the bezel markings.
Two other innovations, the double case back and double O ring crown system, were also patented and incorporated into an innovative diving watch driven by a self-winding movement.
Since magnets were often present in the diving environment, the early models were constructed with a soft iron inner cage as a shield to protect the movement from magnetism.
Luminescent indications against a dark dial ensured the legibility of the Fifty Fathoms, whose name was inspired by Ariel's song from Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Marine creatures spotted during a dive in the Mediterranean.
Launched in 1953, it became an indispensable instrument for divers on their underwater missions, including those carried out by the French Navy.
After being failed by other watches, Capt Robert "Bob" Maloubier and Lt Claude Riffaud successfully tested the Fifty Fathoms, which was adopted by the newly-formed French Combat diving corps.
US Navy Seals as well as German, Israeli and other navies also equipped their military divers with Blancpain's modern diving watch.
The Swiss company also supplied the Fifty Fathoms to the French GERS (Undersea Study and Research Group) and Jacques-Yves Cousteau's team of divers, who wore the watch while filming the award-winning movie The Silent World released in 1956.
Cousteau's many TV programmes included the American series The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau.
When he was a kid, Hayek was a big fan of Cousteau and learned to scuba dive after turning 12.
Blancpain president and CEO Marc A. Hayek, third left, joined the Blancpain Ocean Commitment panel discussion at the Hotel Barriere Le Majestic in Cannes.
When he became the president and CEO of Blancpain in 2002, he discovered vintage Fifty Fathoms from the 1950s and 1960s and worked on its revival for the 50th anniversary.
Capt Maloubier joined Hayek in a dive off the coast of Thailand to launch the contemporary Fifty Fathoms in 2003.
The three series of 50 pieces was followed by a new generation of the Fifty Fathoms released in 2007. The collection has then grown to include models in different sizes and materials and with various complications.
In addition supporting marine preservation became a calling for Hayek because he saw the changing ocean environment while diving.
His concern about whale sharks brought him to PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) in 2003. Studying their habitats and migration pattern through photographs and the locations where they were taken would help in determining measures to protect the species.
Today, PADI has grown to become a global network of more than 6,600 dive centres and resorts. Blancpain and PADI have joined forces to increase the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) and directly support the global 30x30 commitment to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030.
Blancpain's former CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter during a dive in the South of France in 1953.
At the heart of this initiative is Adopt The Blue, whose goal is to establish thousands of small protected areas through the network of professional divers, dive centres and local communities around the world.
Founder and leader of National Geographic's Pristine Seas expeditions Enric Sala was instrumental in establishing the MPAs in the US, Chile, Gabon, French Polynesia, the Seychelles and other locations.
From 2011 until 2016, Blancpain was a founding partner of his expeditions, which studied these areas as part of the effort to raise awareness of the value and uniqueness of their ecosystems and to secure government pledges to protect them.
Blancpain is also founding supporter of The Economist's annual World Ocean Summit launched in 2012.
Other partners include Oceana, whose Project Alacranes investigated and documented the health of the Bajos del Norte and Alacranes reefs, home to some of the richest marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
The 70th anniversary event looked back and updated on the Blancpain Ocean Commitment partnerships through a panel discussion held at the Hotel Barriere Le Majestic in Cannes. The multiple anniversaries include 10 years of the Gombessa Expeditions, which Blancpain has been supporting since the very first mission in 2013.
Blancpain's multiple anniversaries include 10 years of the Gombessa Expeditions.
Equipped with a Fifty Fathoms, French underwater photographer and biologist Laurent Ballesta led Gombessa I, which involved 40 days of deep diving in South Africa's waters.
During a dive, he came face to face with the legendary sea creature, the coelacanth, locally known gombessa. A crucial link between fish and land animals, the cœlacanth lives at a depth of over 100m.
Gombessa projects focus on studying some of the rarest, most elusive marine creatures and phenomena on Earth.
To date, there have been six major expeditions. Titled Mission Cap Corse, Gombessa VI aimed to unravel the mystery of the "coral rings" that cover the Mediterranean off the coast of Cap Corse, at a depth of 100m.
The Gombessa and other expeditions supported by Blancpain provide new knowledge, new questions, and remarkable images of the beauty of the ocean while contributing to scientific research and encouraging conservation measures.
The original Fifty Fathoms from 1953.