I'm no diver, but 144m is pretty deep. Early WWII subs couldn't even make 160m, much less a diver in a wetsuit. At 144m that's already about 190psi (or 131 kPa).

144m isn't for the average civilian, standard PADI qualified divers are qualified to dive till 18 meters, i believe civilians don't go any deeper than 60meters, not sure abaut military though

I am a padi open water diver and i can't go deeper than 25m. I believe some go as far as 50m but only with special training and special gas. Anyway, would be good if some mission designs could incorporate a element of real diving to make things more challenging.

When you use rebreather in military missions, they use pure oxygen what become dangerous if you go any further below than about 10 meters.

If you use open circuit scuba gears (like most hobby divers use!) you will dive no more than 30 meters below surface. If you go deeper than that you will get nitrogen narcosis.
If you are military diver, you are trained to dive under 50 meter below for short period of time.

After that you will use differend kind of gasses to go further below.

oxygen rebreathers are currently limited to a depth of 6 meters (20 ft)

There are many types of re-breathers some can go alot deeper then others but around 50m is about the max (besides they wouldn't need to go that deep on a mission)For example extreme cave divers use re-breathers to go around 50m

With rebreathers it is possible to dive up to 200 meters and more, but this is not the common case. Normally, like it is already said, you stay above 50 meters, but keep in mind that we are out of the hobby-area and the scenario is playing in the future!

A diver can get to ~300/400Meter with a technical diver license.. so dont worry about diving is too deep.. BIS should just make oxygen tanks and different mixtures..

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_maximum_depth_a_human_can_dive_to

Re-Breather Use
The options for modern exploration are most commonly open circuit scuba and re-breather. Diving is limited by the correct mixture of breathable gases. On open circuit "classic" scuba the gas must be mixed ahead of time, while on re-breathers a diver always has the right mix of gas for the depth. Australian diver David Shaw successfully used a modified recreational re-breather to reach a depth of 888 ft (270 m) in fresh water in 2004. (Shaw died on an attempt to recover a fellow diver's body in 2005.)

Nitrox enables deep long dives.

1. Longer Bottom Times: Recreational nitrox (21 - 40% oxygen) contains a lower percentage of nitrogen than air. The reduced percentage of nitrogen in recreational nitrox allows divers to extend their dive time.

(National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association) no-decompression dive tables, a diver using Nitrox 36 (or NOAA Nitrox II) may stay up to 50 minutes at 90 feet of sea water, while a diver using air may only stay a maximum of 30 minutes at this depth.

I'm not going to vote up or down on this, but i can live with what already is existing in alpha for diving depth. Remember that this game is based in the future, so there is room for a little freedom in this department. If you need to pretend in your own mind that you are using a type of gas, to feel comfortable, then go for it. Either way this issue should not effect many, but for simulation purposes, it is a good thing to discuss realities and i hope whatever they do makes sense for what they are trying to portray, but i'm not an experienced diver, so my opinion does not count, but i just wanted to express my unbiased opinion about this.

Closing cloned duplicates.