The water pressure is too great. It doubles with every 33 feet of depth. The maximum depth for conventional Scuba diving is about 40 m (130 ft), technical divers with specialized gas mixtures may work down to 110 m (350 ft). The depth of the deep sea can be as far down as 4,000 m (14,000 ft)
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There are 3 main reasons:
Oxygen becomes toxic when compressed.
Other gasses will have side-effects (like nitrogen) when they are breathed at depth.
Others gasses dissolve into a divers blood and when they surface can bubble (like a can of coke, no bubble when closed, when you open it bubble appear because of the relative pressure change). Large bubbles can injure of kill the diver.
Divers Dive in deep waters because the air tank isn't necessary in shallow waters diving in shallow waters would not make access to air. In deep water the water pressure is so strong that the air tank is necessary to keep them for a supply of air. Secondly in deep waters the exciting views such as coral reefs and the different type of fishes and other underwater sights that are studies are ALL located in deep waters. There fore Diving is best done in Deep waters.
Most technical diving is done in deep water (more than the recreational limit of 130 feet) because that is where the work is - oil rigs and such. For recreational divers, there is an allure of going where few other people can go, and the 100-130 foot range is particularly alluring, as very few divers are qualified to go there.
Using standar air, below about 70 metres, the partial pressure of oxygen is so high (about 1.6 bar) that oxygen becomes toxic. This is called oxygen toxicity.
Most recreational diving organisations recommend a maximum depth much less than this. For BSAC the maximum (with training) is 50. I think for some other organisations it is 40m.
If you are using a gas mix with a higher oxygen content such as Nitrox, the maximum depth would be lower (probably about 40-50m) because of the higher partial mix of oxygen.
There is also the problem with nitrogen narcosis where the presence of nitrogen in the breathing gas impacts the divers ability and can give the effects of euphoria for example.
A thermocline is the boundry layer of two different temperatures of water. The colder water is denser and the warmer water is less dense and so it floats on top of the denser colder water. It is possible to swim from one side of it to the other if the thermocline is shallow enough. Thermoclines can be broken up by large waves mixing the water, so if a thermocline exists, it might be quite deep in Oceans.
I've not heard specifically 1 metre before but obviously the deeper you go the more pressure builds up on the chest that your muscles have to work against to expand the lungs. Eventually, at some depth, your lungs can't do it so you can't breathe!
Scuba gets round this by feeding you pressurised air so the lungs don't have to work so hard; the pressure is balanced inside and out.