What It Feels Like to Dive Deep, Past 130 Feet

Last Updated on March 11, 2025 by Candice Landau

What does it feel like to dive deep?

While “deep” is a relative term, I’m going to assume that if you’re asking this question, you’re already a scuba diver. I’m assuming that because most non-divers would simply ask what it feels like to scuba dive.

If, however, you’re a certified diver wondering what the depths feel like (we’re talking past 130 feet, into the realm of technical diving), then I’m happy to share my experience.

Before I do, however, I want to make one thing clear. In NO way do I recommend deep diving without training. This is because you don’t know what you don’t know. Even with training, there are still things you won’t know, partly because the dive science isn’t there yet, and partly because no two bodies react to depth the same way.

If you intend to dive deep or become a technical diver, I strongly recommend you take charge of your physical health and get a medical check-up, a real medical check-up that tests your heart, your risk for things like deep vein thrombosis, and anything else that remotely concerns you.

If you dive deep without training, you’re not brave, you’re dumb. Chasing the high of a deep dive is akin to speeding with a high blood alcohol content. Someone’s probably going to die and chances are it’s you.

That said, you didn’t come here to read my lecture on safe diving, you came to satisfy your curiosity for the call of the deep.

Pursuing sidemount training in Egypt. Though I’d dived with stage bottles many times before this, I’d always done my deeper technical dives on doubles. Pursuing extra training was a way to get more experience and learn skills I new I didn’t know might be important. Photo credit: Kristin Paterakis

What it feels like to descend into the depths

There’s a world of difference between what it feels like to scuba dive deep when you’re in warm/clear versus cold/murky water, and when you’re feeling comfortable versus anxious. The former is because dark, cold water feels deeper and has a more intense impact on your body and the latter because gas narcosis and breathing are going to affect you mentally.

When I’m in a good head space, there’s nothing better than the feeling of depth. In fact, some of my favorite experiences have taken place on deeper wrecks—the San Francisco Maru in Chuuk Lagoon, Elphinstone Arch in the Red Sea, the Diamond Knot in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

>> Related Reading: The Draw of the Deep

When I’m in a bad head space the encroaching gas narcosis might start at 90 feet and get significantly worse as I get deeper, culminating, for me, in a deep sense of paranoia, a metallic feeling in my mouth and a racing heart. Breathing often also gets harder, as though you have to exert more energy to pull a full breath from your regulator. I usually turn the dive at this point, or stop to get my anxiety (and breathing) under control. More often than not this is enough to calm me, or at least to stop a build up of CO2.

But, the draw of the deep is real. I felt it first diving in the Hood Canal in Washington State. The gentle slope, encroaching dark, and distant sea whips seem to beckon me deeper still. With my drysuit compressing me gently, keeping me warm in 50 degree fahrenheit water, I felt impossibly safe. What could go wrong?

In the early days of diving I learned as most other divers do—in pieces, via trial and error, through taking courses. Fortunately, most of my deep diving was learned after I’d taken the requisite technical diving courses and as such, had a bit of knowledge to draw on—how to don extra cylinders, how to plan dives with washout and redundant gasses, how to plan safety intervals, monitor ascent rates, and dive slowly.

Many of my “training dives” for deeper diving took place in shallow waters where I could get used to using the equipment. This would take place in safe, easy-to-dive sites along the Hood Canal, more often than not. Photo credit: Candice Landau

If you’re newer to diving, I highly recommend you work your way through the various certifications. Do your advanced, do your rescue, do deep, learn to dive well and slowly. Get in trim, shoot SMBs, develop all of the skills you need to ensure you can be safe and that you know what you’re doing. Then, go and take an intro to tech or decompression procedures course.

Into Outer Space

Today I’m a semi-regular connoisseur of the sub 100 ft depths, though largely in warm waters as I travel for work. There’s a vast chasm of difference between diving 120 feet at depth in cold murky water and 120 feet of depth in warm clear water.

In cold murky water, the feeling is just more intense. A 120 foot dive can feel like a 160 foot dive in warm clear water. Though it can feel worse if you’re anxious, it can also feel better.

Jeff and my buddy, Andrew, studying the wreck of the Diamond Knot, post dive, getting ready for dive 2 on it! Photo credit: Candice Landau.

I’ll never forget what it felt to drop on the anchor line heading for the wreck of the Diamond Knot. Visibility in the order of a murky 20 to 25 feet, it felt as though I was heading into outer space.

As I descended, slowly adding air to my drysuit, the dark grew tighter, all encompassing.

The surface disappeared and any frame of reference vanished until at about 50 feet, the top of the wreck began to appear out of the haze, still another 20 feet below.

Heart hammering, I watched my first ever swimming scallop chew through the waters in front of me, and, feeling dazed, stopped and caught my breath, as expressionless as the surrounding rockfish.

I waited for my buddy behind me and then began following our fearless trip leader, Jeff Carr, around the bough. At no point could I make out the other half of the wreck or even any of the middle remains, and never a glimpse at the surface. Whatever was happening up there was a world away.

You don’t get this feeling diving clear water, not unless you’re really really deep. Not even on a wreck like the San Francisco Maru in Chuuk Lagoon, well not unless you descend into engine rooms and the likes. If you’re diving Chuuk, I strongly recommend you get your tech certifications. You can do it as a recreational diver, but you’ll be doing it dumb.

With a visible surface

It’s easy to get complacent when 100 feet below you can still easily see the surface. This photo taken on the Fujikawa Maru in Chuuk Lagoon. Photo credit: Candice Landau

The feeling of diving deep is a little different when you can see the surface and the beckoning depth below. It feels, frankly, a little more freeing and thus is almost more dangerous. If you’ve ever dived a sheer wall that plummets endlessly down you’ll probably be familiar with the feeling of “just another few feet,” and the endless question, “I wonder what’s down there?”

That question is one that has got many a diver and cave diver in quite a bit of trouble. The truth is, it’s never anything worth dying for, or risking your life over. It’s just another few feet to prompt a repeat of the question, or another turn in the cave, another few feet to run guideline through.

Today I am far more cautious about depth. Perhaps it’s age and time, perhaps it’s knowing how easily things can go wrong.

Closing thoughts on deep diving

In Chuuk Lagoon, almost every single dive was a deep dive, and quite a few below 130 feet. On these dives, even prepared, I got used to the feeling. My mouth always had a slightly more metallic taste, my heart always raced harder, my awareness narrowed and I found at the start I was always slightly shaking. This settled after a but the awareness never left and I checked my air gauge regularly, doubles on my back aside! Of course, this was all open circuit air diving so no doubt gas narcosis was hitting me hard. When you dive trimix, a lot of this narcosis dissipates. I didn’t believe it until I tried it. Even shallow (100 feet) the difference is thinking clarity is noticeable.

Photo taken on San Francisco Maru, picturing the author’s dive guide. Often known as the Million Dollar Wreck for the “wealth” of cargo still on board, the SF Maru is 385′ in length. The deck is around 165′ and holds go down to 190’+. We dropped into hold 2 to inspect trucks and huge stock piles of bombs then swam through to hold one to see more mines and bombs. Due to the depth, we didn’t get much bottom time—just 15 minutes. Had about 20 minutes of deco and still only had time to see half the ship. Photo credit: Candice Landau

Most of my deep dives now have a goal in mind. No longer do I edge closer to the dark questing for another few feet of personal depth record (don’t lie, you did that at the start too!). Now I dive deep only for specific reasons—a wreck or feature I want to see, a marine creature that can’t be seen any shallower, or training.

I have heard too many stories about random bubbles to the brain (even when the dive was within limits), or “undeserved” decompression hits, or stuff just going wrong to make me want to turn diving into an activity that is less about tranquility and more about facing demons.

But, I’m curious: what does deep diving feel like to you?