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If each breath the diver takes holds five times as much air as normal (compressed into the same volume), the diver is absorbing five times as much of the individual constituents. Therefore, in every breath the diver breathes in five times as much nitrogen, and five times as much oxygen.

Nitrogen is largely inert on the surface; the 79 per cent of nitrogen you are breathing right now as you read this is passing in and out of your body harmlessly. But the deeper you go, the higher are the volumes of compressed air breathed in each breath – and the more the increasing amounts of nitrogen in your body start to cause the debilitating effect known as nitrogen narcosis. Cousteau with typical flair called this effect the ‘Raptures of the Depths’.

For me, breathing air at 50 metres is roughly the same as drinking four pints of beer. The narcosis strips away your ability to understand and rationalise situations – and robs you of the ability to deal with things when they go wrong. The ‘narcs’, as they are affectionately known, affect people in different ways. Some get euphoric – some get paranoid. Some people get tunnel vision; others lose control and panic when the simplest thing goes wrong – something that could easily be dealt with normally by the same person on the surface.