I love all the toys that come with diving. When I get on a plane to travel, I can always tell whether the other passengers are divers. Besides a penchant for aloha shirts and pieces-of-eight necklaces, divers wear their passion on their wrist.

My passion comes in the form of a Citizen Aqualand NX dive watch. What drew me to this watch was the power. I'm a dictatorial, power-mad person when it comes to my life-saving devices. I'm also a nitrox addict. So, unless my dive watch can tell me how long I can stay at depth with a 32 percent mix, I'll defenestrate the sucker as fast as I can. That's because I like to use my watch as my backup computer. The only reason my Aqualand NX is my backup, though, is because it's not air-integrated. (Dear Citizen: Make it so, and I'm yours for life!) I also like my dive watch to double as a watch – without all the bulk or the "Inspector Gadget" look typically associated with dive computer watches.

I want to be able to wear my watch to the prom or a state dinner. Which is exactly how the Aqualand functions: as a classy timepiece (as classy as I get, anyway) and an intelligent, intuitive dive instrument. The case is reinforced steel, so it does well when left in my dive bag. On the dive side of the Aqualand's personality, it'll log my most recent 100 dives as well as display all the normal stuff – current depth, max depth, no-deco time (and deco-time, if it happens). And it displays my favorite graphic: a swimming diver. Yep, a swimming diver. Once you descend past 3 feet a diver graphic, with perfect fin-kicking form, shows up on the bottom of the watch face. For divers as easily distracted as I tend to be, it'll serve as a reminder that you are, in fact, diving.

The Aqualand will also transfer your data to your PC for your digital logbook via an infrared or USB connection, and it even has a travel-ready charger that runs off four AA batteries.

And I look cool to other divers when we give each other that knowing look in airports.