Omega Seamaster Proffesional 600 ‘Ploprof’

A tool-watch in its purest form.

Military, professional and leisure diving really took off in the sixties and seventies. All these new divers would need a way to measure and calculate elapsed and remaining dive time and decrompession times. Nowadays, divers might use advanced dive computers but such a machine would take up a rather large room back in the days. So professional and amateur divers alike relied on their trusty dive watches for their safety. Legendary watches such as the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, Rolex Submariner, Rolex Sea-dweller, Doxa Sub 300, and Seiko 62MAS were born.

Omega decided they would build a watch that was not only suited to diving, but actually exclusively intended for diving. They set out to build the ultimate diving watch without bothering themselves with mundaine matters such as aesthetics and fashion.

Omega teamed up with the legendary Jacques Cousteau and Comex, an oil company and one of the largest employers of professional divers. After four years, in 1970, the resulting Seamaster Professional 600M was ready for the high seas. They nicknamed it the “Ploprof”, short for the French “Plongeur professionel” or Professional diver. And professional it was. The price was nearly twice that of the Rolex Submariner, so it was out of reach for most hobby divers. Omega themselves underlined the function over form design by campaigning the tagline: “It might not look pretty on the surface, but deep down it’s beautiful”.

The fun thing about form-follows-function, is that these designs tend to age rather well. And this is definitely the case with this Ploprof 600 from 1970 (yes, the first year of production). Let’s be honest, it looks awesome! It screams vintage diving adventure and comes with a ton of oldskool James Bond-ish charm. The original blue rubber strap completes the package.

Case: 55x48mm

Come visit us at Reestraat 3 to see how it looks on your wrist.