Nick Nolte wears a Rolex Submariner

Peter Benchley adapted his own novel again after Jaws, and Peter Yates directed. Yates had made Bullitt nine years earlier. Nolte plays David Sanders, half of a young couple vacationing in Bermuda who stumble onto a sunken wreck holding both Spanish gold and World War II morphine. Robert Shaw, top-billed, plays the local diving expert Romer Treece. On Sanders's wrist is a Rolex Submariner Date.

The Submariner Date arrived at the end of the 1960s as the reference 1680, the first Submariner to carry a date window and a Cyclops lens. Rolex had launched the Submariner itself in 1953, built for divers. Nolte's was a steel 1680 on an Oyster bracelet, with the standard black bezel and black dial. The exact watch he wore survives: made in 1975, its caseback engraved 'The Deep, 1976.' Nolte gave it to a member of the crew when filming wrapped, and Sotheby's auctioned it in 2021.