ScubaBrucie

SCUBA diving is not a competetive sport, yeet some people cannot control their natural competetive spirit. This often manifests itself in going deep. How many times have I heard people boasting about this?
Yet depth is extremely dangerous. Just look at the accident reports. Narcosis is worse, air consumption shoots up, you encounter decompression problems and it is a long way to the safety of the surface.
My personal take is that I only go as deep as is necessary to see what I want to see, and as the best sealife is above 25 metres that means that on most recreational bimbles I don’t need to go any deeper.
Just now there is a big macho craze about going deep amongst Russian divers and loads of them are ending up dead.  

The PADI deep course is excellent. Alongside Nitrox I consider it almost essential. It enables a diver early in their career to progress a little deeper in a controlled and safe way whilst learning about the various problems. If more people did this course then there would be less people having problems at depth. Also, and this is very important, your dive insurance usually only covers you to your certified depth. A British man a couple of years ago bent himself deeper than his certified depth in the Red Sea and his insurance company refused to pay his £50,000 bill. When you get bent the chamber needs your computer to treat you and they have to tell the insurance company what you have done.