Brand ambassadors are a common enough sight in the current luxury watch industry. High-profile watch brands attract partnerships with celebrities of nearly every stripe, from music icons to Hollywood movie stars and world-class athletes, but very few watch brand ambassadors can boast multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth. Ulysse Nardin’s latest ambassador is something of an exception to this, as he happens to be a 990-pound adult male great white shark. Fitted with a tracking tag and released off the coast of Nova Scotia by marine biology research group and longtime Ulysse Nardin brand partner OCEARCH, the shark has been named Ulysses in honor of the watchmaker and will help scientists better understand the habits and migration patterns of these majestic and often misunderstood animals. To celebrate this newest addition to the Ulysse Nardin team, the brand has announced a special iteration of its recently updated dive chronograph series with a stylish great white-inspired colorway. With a bright new look, durable construction, and a capable in-house movement, the new Ulysse Nardin Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White is a hardy and handsome celebration of one of the ocean’s greatest predators.

As the name suggests, the titanium case of the Ulysse Nardin Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White measures in at a bold 44mm wide. At an imposing 16.1mm tall, this should carry a serious presence on the wrist, particularly with a predominantly brushed and media blasted matte finish. Although the only real polished flash to speak of in images comes courtesy of the spaces between the dive bezel’s gear teeth, Ulysse Nardin does break up this hefty profile slightly with a stepped lug design. The overall shape should be familiar to fans of the brand, however, with its signature ribbed rubberized bezel insert in bold optic white and matching accents on the screw-down pushers. Interestingly, this model abandons the standard Diver Chronograph 44mm’s sapphire display caseback in favor of a solid back featuring a great white shark motif (Ulysse Nardin was unable to provide images of this caseback before press time). In terms of performance, this case performs identically to the standard model with a hefty 300-meter water resistance rating.

The dial of the Ulysse Nardin Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White is where the design’s shark inspiration shines through most cleverly, with a roughly textured medium gray surface reminiscent of sharkskin. The brand complements this neutral tone with pops of royal blue for the recessed subdials as well as the 6 o’clock date display. The design otherwise follows the standard Diver Chronograph 44mm formula closely, with broad split paddle hands, chunky applied rectangular indices, and azurage highlights on the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock subdials. The date window integration at 6 o’clock remains a high point of this dial, both tying into the overall colorway and smoothly integrating into the 6 o’clock subdial to maintain overall visual symmetry.

Ulysse Nardin powers the Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White with its in-house UN-150 automatic chronograph movement. Since its introduction in 2013, the UN-150 has been at the core of many of the brand’s chronograph releases and remains an impressively modern and effective powerplant eight years on from its release. With a balance wheel, balance spring, and anchor in high-tech Silicium, the UN-150 offers a robust 52 hours of power reserve at a 28,800 bph beat rate. Ulysse Nardin finishes the watch with its signature rubber strap in bezel-matching white with a signed titanium link at 6 o’clock. In addition to this offbeat trademark touch, this strap adds another visual highlight with a stylized great white shark silhouette at 12 o’clock in Super-LumiNova.

While it may not be the most innovative release from the brand this year, the clean gray, white, and blue colorway coupled to a more aggressive matte case make the Ulysse Nardin Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White one of the most striking variants in the lineup and a suitably bold tribute to the world’s most famous shark. Only 300 examples of this model will be made, and the watch will be available for pre-order in the United States in October 2021 before becoming available worldwide in early 2022. MSRP for the Ulysse Nardin Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited Edition Great White stands at $13,300. For more details, please visit the brand’s website.