part deux

Several factors are known to impede the ability of any animal to dive to great depth, be they mammalian or reptillian. An animal that breathes air and has definite structure is going to suffer simmilar ailments as another animal at great depths.
These factors consist maintaining homeostasis through immense pressure, decompression sickness and lack of oxygen.

The pressure exerted upon the torso of a plesiosaur at 200 meters is roughly equivalent to 21 atmospheres, It is known for green turtles existing today to dive to depths much larger than this.
It is known that the plesiosaur family had wide, flattened bodies to which their flippers were attached. For such deep dives to be possible without harm to the animal, a sort of protective "cage" would need to surround the internal organs so as not to be crushed by the immense pressure, yet the cage itself would need to be flexible to have the ability to collapse and keep the pressure in the lungs equal to the pressure in the water. The plesiosaur family overcame this hurdle through a series of dense, closely packed belly ribs. these ribs made the torso rigid and able to withstand the pressures of the deep sea, yet flexible enough to almost totally collapse with the lungs to maintain equal pressure with the ocean, but also protected the belly of the plesiosaur when the animal left the ocean to lay its eggs on the beach. The external shells of modern turtles have the basic same function to provide rigidity at great depths, and protection of the delicate belly tissues when descending from the sea to lay eggs. Turtles also use their shells as protection from predators, and it is possible that smaller plesiosaurs used their closely packed ribs as protection from predation, though understandably not as successfully as if it had been an external shell.
perhaps the closest example we have to the belly ribs of the plesiosaur in a modern-day animal is the cartilaginous shell of the leatherback turtle. the cartilaginous shell provides rigidity under immense pressure, but also has "give" and is able to collapse and not snap under immense pressure, allowing for the turtles lungs to collapse during a deep dive. The leatherback is the deepest diving reptile known today.

When diving to depths of greater than 30 meters, some humans experience a condition known commonly as "the bends" or decompression sickness. It is basically caused by nitrogen which has come out of solution in the divers blood and formed small bubbles of gas in the surrounding tissues. Decompression sickness is a serious and potentially fatal side effect of deep dives, but many marine reptiles and mammals frequently dive and resurface without any ill effect.
There are 2 possible mechanisms the plesiosaur could have developed to overcome decompression sickness during frequent dives.