The depth of the water attached to the planes is relative to its size, so you could try to utilize a series of smaller or scaled down water planes and see if you could fix it that way. I know that scaling up the size of a water plane increases the depth of the water.
This is true. You can see the depth of the water objects by viewing the collision geometry (F4). However, if you make an area with multiple water "blocks", the player will always take a breath when swimming from one block to another, even if you make them overlap.