ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the watery world of free divers and how they succumb to – as part of negotiating – a state of narcosis. Those who have witnessed, experienced and recorded their recollections of the rapture produced by falling to depth are drawn into a discussion about the transformative potential of oceans to the range and depth of human consciousness and experience. Early marine scientists in the nineteenth century believed that drowned people would fall to a depth in the ocean at which their density would equal that of the water and they would thus 'find their depth'. Narcosis occurs in both SCUBA and free divers. In its simplest form, it is the result of a 'gaseous attack on the central nervous system' that happens under pressure of depth. The cognitive and physiological aspects of narcosis are better understood than the emotional states that are produced.
