News · Christopher Ward

A parrotfish, and the Christopher Ward built around it

Five hundred pieces, a teal dial, a coral red seconds hand, and £30 a watch to Blue Marine.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 7 August 2026

Parrotfish spend their days scraping algae off coral so the reef can keep growing, then grinding up the dead stuff and excreting it as white sand. A decent share of any tropical beach has been through one. Blue Marine Foundation considers them essential, and Christopher Ward has now built a watch in their colours.

The Trident 30×30 is limited to 500 pieces and takes its name from Blue Marine's 30×30 Ocean Action Plan, the push to protect 30 percent of the world's water by 2030. Christopher Ward calls it the third watch the two have made together, though Time+Tide counts it as their fourth collaboration.

It is teal, not parrotfish blue

Worth correcting one thing first. Several outlets described the dial as parrot fish blue. Christopher Ward's own listing calls it teal, with a coral red seconds hand. The fish is in the two colours together, and the scheme comes from #FishForTomorrow, a campaign Blue Marine ran with The Maldives Resilient Reef.

The wave pattern across the dial is called Aeolian and exists only here. "This pattern is bespoke, and designed only for this watch," says designer Matthew Sweatman. Indices and hands are deep-filled with Super-LumiNova Grade X1 BL C1.

The case that came off last year’s Reef

Underneath is the four-piece 41mm case Christopher Ward introduced on last year's Trident Reef, which lets them run different finishes and shades in one case. It is 316L steel and aluminium, 11.45mm tall, 47.90mm lug to lug, water resistant to 200 metres, with a screw-down crown and a closed back stamped with the 30×30 logo over a three-dimensional wave. The bezel is a unidirectional countdown type on a matte aluminium insert. The crystal is anti-reflective sapphire.

The movement is the Sellita SW200-2 Power+, 26 jewels at 28,800 vph, 65 hours, quoted at minus five to plus twelve seconds a day. Christopher Ward credits the gain over a standard SW200 to an optimised gear train, a redesigned barrel and mainspring, a reworked winding system and an updated balance. The rotor is skeletonised and sandblasted underneath, with linear brushing above and concentric circular brushing on the weight.

What thirty pounds a watch adds up to

Australian buyers pay 1,650 dollars on the Aquaflex rubber strap and 1,950 on the Bader bracelet, both open for pre-order on Christopher Ward's own site. That is 895 and 1,060 pounds in the United Kingdom.

Thirty pounds from each sale goes to Blue Marine, so 15,000 pounds across the run, and that is a little over three percent of the rubber-strap price. The 2 percent of all Trident revenue Christopher Ward has donated since 2019 is the more serious commitment, and it has never needed a limited edition attached to it. Time+Tide puts the total raised across the partnership at 750,000 pounds.

Deliveries are due mid October, and it ships in a sleeve made from Notpla seaweed paper. The movement carries a 60-month guarantee.

Eleven point four five millimetres on a 200-metre diver is why Tridents wear better than their spec sheets suggest, and it remains the quiet achievement of the whole collection.