Into the Abyss is a fascinating collection of diving stories. It chronicles one man's all-consuming passion and takes us on a spellbinding journey beneath the waves. Packed full of drama, danger and excitement, this book charts both the successes and the tragic failures of Rod Macdonald's astonishing diving career.

Macdonald invites us to experience with him his first, panic-stricken boat dive as a newly qualified novice and later his expert use of the latest technology to venture deeper than ever before. In vivid prose, he takes us to famous shipwreck sites around the world, from the sunken Japanese fleet at the bottom of Truk Lagoon and Palau in the South Pacific, to HMS Hampshire, on which Lord Kitchener perished. He describes the ordeal of diving the third-largest whirlpool in the world, the Corryvreckan Whirlpool in the west of Scotland, and many other terrifying incidents in which he and his colleagues have come close to death beneath the sea.

To many, the appeal of diving into hostile, powerful waters in search of virgin shipwrecks " often in pitch darkness " is incomprehensible. Macdonald invites us to confront and overcome some of our deepest fears as he takes us down into the abyss.