Mark Ellyatt took 12 minutes to plunge to a depth of 313 metres (1,026.9 ft) off the island of Phuket on Thailand’s west coast to break the previous record by five metres (16.4 ft).
He then took six hours and 40 minutes to return to the surface.
He is the first scuba diver to break the 1,000 ft barrier – which was long regarded as diving’s ‘four-minute mile’.A diving instructor in Phuket, Mr Ellyatt took six tanks of air with him and another 24 were brought down by support divers, who met him at various stages of the dive.
A lengthy ascent was needed to ensure that Mr Ellyatt avoided decompression sickness, which is caused by a build-up of nitrogen in the blood and can result in death.
Describing the dive as a lonely experience and ‘a bit like a trip to the moon’, Mr Ellyatt broke the previous record of 308 metres (1,015.5 ft) set off the Philippines in 2001 by another British diver, John Bennett.In July 2000, Mr Ellyatt set a new world record for the deepest recreational wreck dive in the Hurd Deep off Alderney when he descended to a depth of 170 metres (557.7 ft) in seven minutes to reach the wreck of the German First World War battleship Baden.
