Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving
Gareth Lock at The Human Diver 286 episodes Nov 11, 2026
Human factors is a critical topic within the world of SCUBA diving, scientific diving, military diving, and commercial diving. This podcast is a mixture of interviews and 'shorts' which are audio versions of the weekly blog from The Human Diver. Each month we will look to have at least one interview and one case study discussion where we look at an event in detail and how human factors and non-technical skills contributed (or prevented) it from happening in the manner it did.
Episodes
SH322: 9. The Herbs and Spices of Diving
In this blog, Jenny Lord explores the “herbs and spices” of diving: the small techniques and habits that are rarely found in standards manuals but can make a big difference to performance. Like cooking, becoming a great diver, instructor, guide or teammate is not just about following a recipe; it comes from practising small skills such as setting clear expectations, building shared language, askin
SH321: 8. Learning from Emergent Outcomes – A Game Changer for Accident Analysis in Diving
This blog introduces Learning From Emergent Outcomes (LFEO), a new approach to analysing diving incidents that looks beyond what went wrong or who was responsible and asks how the outcome emerged from the whole system. It explores the gap between how we imagine work happens and how it actually happens, as well as common problems such as hindsight and outcome bias, blame, normalisation of deviance
SH320: When you say it is easy to call a dive... If you've got POWER, it is easier
This blog explores why telling divers to “speak up” or “call the dive” is not enough to create a culture where people actually feel able to do it. Speaking up can have an immediate social cost, while staying quiet may feel like the safer choice, particularly for newer divers, people who have paid a lot for a course, guests who want to be invited back, or professionals who are challenging someone w
SH319: 7. Metabolising Experience: How Experience Becomes Learning
This blog looks at what happens between having an experience and actually learning from it, particularly when that experience is frightening or traumatic. Our brains constantly take in information, process it and store what is useful, allowing experiences to become learning that changes how we behave. The blog compares this to a block-building game, where information needs to be sorted and fitted
SH318: Technical Skills Are Not Enough: Human Factors in Diving and the Difference Between Chaos and Coordination
This blog compares two diving emergencies at the same dive centre to show why technical competence alone is not enough. In the first incident, a diver survived, but the instructors struggled to coordinate because they had only received a basic introduction to Human Factors in Diving. Roles were unclear, communication became fragmented and attention narrowed to the immediate problem. Before the sec
SH317: 6. Social Media Isn't Broken. It's Doing Exactly What It Was Designed to Do.
This episode explores how social media shapes the way the diving community responds to serious incidents. When an accident happens, discussions can quickly move from sympathy to certainty, with people assigning blame and explaining what the victims or divers “should” have done before the facts are known. The problem is that social media rewards strong emotions, certainty and disagreement, while co
SH316: Quit while you still can
When should a diver call off a dive, even when everything seems to be going well? Using the 1996 Everest disaster as a starting point, this episode explores why we often celebrate people who reach their goals while overlooking those who make the difficult decision to turn back. In diving, fatigue, minor equipment problems, rushed briefings and tension within a team can seem manageable on their own
SH315: The Insurance Illusion
This episode explores what diving insurance can—and cannot—do, drawing on insights from two highly experienced dive insurance underwriters. Insurance can help cover the financial consequences of an incident, but it does not make diving safer or prevent harm, and policies may have conditions that limit when they will respond. The discussion also highlights how difficult it is for the diving industr
SH314: 5. Human Factors as an Operating System
In this episode, Brent Webb explores the idea that Human Factors should be more than a collection of concepts or courses—it can become the “operating system” of an organisation. Drawing on his experience running Scuba Adventures in Plano, Brent explains how psychological safety, Just Culture, systems thinking, debriefing and curiosity have become part of the way the business operates, influencing
SH313: 4. Am I Enough?
In this episode, Connor Tate shares her experience of attending the Human Factors in Diving Conference while struggling with imposter syndrome as a researcher with limited diving experience. Despite understanding the science behind stress and decision-making, Connor discovers the difference between studying these concepts and experiencing them first-hand when a mask-clearing problem at depth trigg
SH312: Your Body Can't Cash the Cheque Your Ego Is Writing
We explore how capable, motivated divers can gradually push beyond safe limits when their environment rewards risk-taking and treats near misses as successes. Using the story of a young technical diver who died after entering a strong current, alongside examples from aviation, we examine how normalisation of deviance, practical drift, peer pressure and the need for recognition can erode safety mar
SH311: 3. Don’t Wait - Learn From Everyday Work Using HOP Principles
This episode explores Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), an approach to safety that starts with the idea that people will always make mistakes, so we should focus on understanding why decisions made sense at the time rather than simply blaming individuals. Drawing on a workshop from the Human Factors in Diving Conference in Vis, Croatia, we look at how HOP can be applied to diving by cons
SH310: 2. More Than a Deep Dive: What a WWII Bomber Recovery Can Teach Us About Human Factors
This episode explores what really makes complex technical diving successful: not just helium, decompression and equipment, but the people using them. Using the recovery of the WWII B-24 Liberator Tulsamerican off the island of Vis as a case study, we look at how communication, teamwork, workload management, clear goals and psychological safety can make the difference between a team that simply com
SH309: Change around Safety Culture is Really Hard
In this episode, Gareth Lock reflects on why improving diving safety requires more than telling people to follow the rules. Drawing on his experience in aviation, diving, and safety science, he explains why incidents are often blamed on individuals while the wider system escapes scrutiny. The discussion explores how culture, reporting systems, commercial pressures, and training standards shape div
SH308: We Know, and We Say Nothing
This episode explores why experienced divers still die in situations that seem predictable, using the tragic 2026 Maldives cave accident as a starting point. It looks at how outcome bias, the normalisation of deviance, nitrogen narcosis, group dynamics, and silent drift can gradually erode safety margins without divers realising it. Rather than focusing on individual mistakes, the discussion expla
SH307: 1. The 2026 HF in Diving Conference - What Did You Miss?
This episode explores how a restorative just culture can help the diving community respond to incidents in a way that promotes learning rather than blame. Instead of focusing only on who broke the rules, it looks at who was harmed, what they need, and how trust can be rebuilt while addressing the wider conditions that contributed to the event. The discussion covers the impact on everyone involved,
SH306: Restorative Just Culture: Repairing Trust After an Event
This episode explores the difference between a retributive approach to diving incidents, which focuses on blame and punishment, and a restorative just culture, which focuses on learning, repair, and preventing future harm. It explains how incidents affect not only those directly involved but also instructors, organisations, and the wider diving community, and argues that real accountability means
SH305: Cause Reason. Excuse. Three Words Doing Three Very Different Things.
This episode explores an important distinction that is often missed when discussing diving incidents: the difference between a cause, a reason, and an excuse. A cause explains what contributed to an event, a reason explains why a person's actions made sense to them at the time, and an excuse uses those reasons to avoid accountability. Understanding these differences helps us learn from accidents w
SH304: Why Investigations Stop Where They Stop
This episode explores why accident investigations often stop long before they uncover the full picture. Drawing on research from safety science, it argues that the “cause” of an incident is not simply discovered—it is shaped by who is investigating, what they are able to change, and what explanations their community accepts. In diving, investigations often focus on the actions of individual divers
SH303: The Structure of This Diving Tragedy Was Not Abnormal. The Scale Was.
This episode explores why diving accidents are so often explained by individual mistakes instead of the wider conditions that made those mistakes possible. Using the case of a fatal medication error in healthcare alongside the recent Maldives cave diving tragedy, it examines how hindsight, blame, and our natural tendency to focus on people rather than systems can prevent meaningful learning. The d
SH302: Why Rules Get Broken. Does It Matter Who Is Breaking Them?
This episode explores why rule-breaking in diving is often more complicated than simply “breaking the rules.” It looks at the difference between shortcuts that organisations quietly depend on to keep operating and personal shortcuts taken for convenience or ego. Through real-world examples, the discussion explains how hindsight can unfairly turn system-wide problems into individual blame after an
SH301: Eight Questions About the Maldives Dive Accident
This episode examines the deaths of five Italian divers in the Maldives and a Maldivian military diver who later died during the recovery operation, using the tragedy to explore how Just Culture approaches accidents in high-risk environments. Rather than rushing to blame individuals, the discussion walks through the Eight-Question Review framework, which looks first at the wider system: authority,
SH300: "We want accountability."
This episode reflects on the tragic deaths of five Italian divers in the Maldives and a Maldivian military diver who died while trying to recover them, using the event to explore what real accountability should look like after a diving accident. Rather than rushing to blame or making assumptions based on limited information, the discussion challenges the diving community to resist quick judgement
SH299: When we ask 'What conditions made this more likely?' perspectives (should) change
This episode challenges the instinct to explain diving accidents by focusing only on individual mistakes or broken rules. Instead, it explores how social, cultural, organisational, and environmental conditions shape the decisions divers make, even when those decisions seem irrational in hindsight. Using recent diving incidents as examples, the discussion highlights how behaviour that appears risky
SH298: Beyond the Floor: Why Meeting the Standard Isn't the Same as Being Safe
This episode challenges the common belief that following diving standards automatically makes diving safe. It explores how industry standards, while important, can create an illusion of safety when compliance becomes the main goal rather than improving real-world performance. The discussion examines how many diving standards are written and assessed by the same organisations they are meant to guid
SH297: CRM, ISO 8804, and Scientific Diving: Opportunities and Existing Materials
This episode explores the growing recognition that safe and effective scientific diving depends on more than technical skill, equipment, and certification. Prompted by new research into applying Crew Resource Management (CRM) to scientific diver training, it examines why communication, leadership, teamwork, and decision-making are essential in complex underwater operations where divers must manage
SH296: When 'I'm Fine' Isn't True: Speaking Up and Ending the Dive
This episode explores a diving incident where nothing officially “went wrong,” yet a series of small decisions and social pressures nearly led to tragedy. A newer CCR diver and his wife joined more experienced divers on an unfamiliar shore dive, and although they surfaced safely, the dive revealed how easily people can ignore warning signs when they feel pressure to fit in, avoid disappointing oth
SH295: Four Ways We Talk About 'Human Factors' in Diving
This episode explores what people really mean when they talk about “human factors” in diving—and why the term can sometimes create more confusion than clarity. It looks at four different ways the phrase is commonly used: blaming “the human factor” when something goes wrong, focusing on what is happening inside the diver such as stress or decision-making, examining the external conditions that shap
SH294: Clickbait, trolls and comments. How dive incident posts can teach us — if we let them
Discussions about diving incidents on social media often follow a predictable pattern: a short, simplified post describes what happened, and comments quickly focus on blaming the individual involved, creating a sense of clear-cut failure and easy lessons. This happens not because people have bad intentions, but because simple, linear stories and knowing the outcome push our brains toward hindsight
SH293: Why does nothing change? Why do the same failures keep happening?
Over the past decade, diving fatalities have remained stubbornly consistent despite better equipment, more training, and growing participation, suggesting the problem isn’t just technical or individual error. Current safety approaches focus on equipment, skills, and counting deaths, but often ignore deeper issues like communication, teamwork, decision-making, and the wider system divers operate in
SH292: Learning or Blaming: The Choice the Diving Industry Needs to Make. Part 3 of 3.
This final blog explores what the research means and how the diving community can realistically improve learning and safety. It argues that the problem is not broken individuals but a system that quietly encourages blame and silence, making it hard for divers to share honest stories about mistakes and near-misses. Fear—of legal action, criticism, or damage to reputation—plays a big role, even when
SH291: What the Data Told Us: Fear, Trust, and the Stories That Never Get Told. Part 2 of 3.
This blog explains how a mixed-methods study explored why divers struggle to share honest, learning-focused stories about incidents. Using a large international survey, focus groups, and expert interviews, the research found that storytelling is strongly shaped by organisational culture, fear, and trust. Many divers—especially instructors—fear legal consequences, criticism, or damage to their repu
SH290: What Happens Underwater, Stays Underwater — And That's a Problem. Part 1 of 3
This episode introduces the problem behind learning in diving safety, using the 2020 death of Linnea Mills to highlight how incidents are often caused by deeper system issues, not just individual mistakes. While near-misses and accidents happen regularly in diving, most are never shared or analysed, meaning valuable lessons are lost. Unlike industries such as aviation or healthcare, diving lacks s
SH289: Chac Mool - Diving Deeper into a Triple Fatality with Human Factors
This episode examines a 2012 triple fatality at Cenote Chac Mool in Mexico using a Human Factors approach, showing how accidents are rarely caused by a single mistake but by a combination of small, interacting factors. A guide took two recreational divers beyond safe limits into an overhead cave environment without a continuous guideline, and all three ran out of gas and died. Instead of simply bl
SH288: The 'Obvious Thing' Nobody Noticed
This episode explores the fatal case of 18-year-old Linnea Mills to show how visible hazards can go unnoticed when an instructor lacks the mental capacity to recognise them. Linnea was overweighted, unable to inflate her drysuit, and using equipment that couldn’t provide enough lift—risks that seem obvious in hindsight but were missed due to a combination of inexperience, time pressure, unfamiliar
SH287: When the Picture Goes Dark
This episode explores why divers don’t truly “lose” situation awareness, but instead run out of the mental capacity needed to maintain it. Through the story of James on a challenging wreck dive, it shows how increasing demands—like current, task focus, and effort—can quietly narrow attention until the bigger picture is lost, even when skills and training are sound. Using two human factors models,
SH286: The Shortcut That Gets You Home — and the One That Doesn't
Divers make many decisions quickly, often without realising it, by using heuristics—mental shortcuts that help us act fast when time and information are limited. These shortcuts are essential and often effective, especially with experience, but they can also lead to predictable errors called biases when used in the wrong situation. Common examples include relying too much on recent experience, sti
SH285: When Skill Alone Isn't Enough: The Resilient Performance Model
Diving operations rarely fail because people lack skill; they fail when skilled individuals are not supported by the systems around them. The Resilient Performance Model from The Human Diver explains that performance comes from the interaction of three areas: technical skills, non-technical skills like communication and decision-making, and the wider context such as culture, workload, and resource
SH284: LEODSI and PETTEOT: A Systems Approach for Understanding How Diving Really Works
When something goes wrong in diving, people often ask “who made the mistake?”, but that question usually oversimplifies what really happened and stops us from learning. The Learning from Emergent Outcomes framework (LEODSI) takes a different approach by looking at diving as a system, where outcomes are shaped by many interacting factors rather than one person’s actions. It examines seven key eleme
SH283: You're Accountable. You're Responsible. You're It!
This piece explores how diving incidents are often misunderstood by focusing too quickly on blame rather than learning. It explains the important difference between responsibility (who was involved) and accountability (who answers for the outcome), showing that incidents are usually caused by a chain of decisions, pressures, and system factors—not just one person’s mistake. By comparing “blame que
SH282: Isolation Amplifies Drift: When Remote Operations Make Small Deviations Invisible
This blog by Michael John Snow explores how small equipment issues on a remote expedition vessel can gradually become accepted as “normal,” not because of poor decisions, but because of how isolated systems work. In these environments, teams are skilled and focused on keeping operations running, especially when guests, tight schedules, and limited support make stopping costly. With fewer external
SH281: HMS Scylla Wreck Penetration Tragedy: Two Perspectives on Learning
This episode looks at the 2021 wreck diving tragedy on HMS Scylla, where three experienced divers entered the wreck and only one survived. It first examines the kind of reaction often seen on social media, where the incident is explained as a series of obvious mistakes made by individuals. It then explores the same event using a human factors and systems approach called LEODSI, which looks at how
SH280: This Could Happen to Any Dive Operator: What We Can Really Learn From The Perth Diving Academy Incident
This episode explores the serious incident in which two divers were accidentally left behind by a dive boat near Rottnest Island while diving with Perth Diving Academy. Rather than treating it as the failure of one operator, the discussion looks at how a simple error—such as a headcount mistake—can reveal deeper weaknesses in safety systems that may exist across the dive charter industry. It expla
SH279: The Tower Was Already Full of Holes
This episode looks at how diving incidents are often explained by blaming the last person involved, much like blaming the person who pulls the final brick from an already unstable Jenga tower. While that person may be the last to act, many other factors—such as environment, equipment, training, social pressure, and organisational practices—may already have weakened the system. Through several real
SH278: Be Curious, Not Judgemental
This episode looks at how quick judgement, especially online, can block learning and make diving less safe. Using a real example of an adaptive scuba training video that received harsh criticism, it explains how people often react without understanding the full context. The episode introduces two key ideas from Human Factors: psychological safety, where people feel safe to ask questions and speak
SH277: You are entering water with known problems, and don't kid yourself that it's any different.
This episode explores why people often go diving even when something feels “off,” and how risk usually starts before anyone gets in the water. It explains that danger doesn’t come from one big mistake, but from small pressures like stress, tiredness, rushing, poor communication, and cutting corners that slowly build up and start to feel normal. Over time, these small compromises become habits, and
SH276: If there are no silver bullets, build capacity to fail safely
This episode explores what real safety improvement in diving could look like if we stop copying other industries and start designing for the reality of diving itself. It explains that diving is commercial, lightly regulated, and full of everyday trade-offs between safety, money, time, and training, which means risk can’t be removed — only managed. Instead of relying only on rules and checklists, t
SH275: The death of a child in diver training. There are no ‘silver bullet’ solutions
This episode looks at the tragic death of 12-year-old D.H. during a scuba training dive and explains it not as one person’s mistake, but as a failure of the whole system around her. Using court documents and a safety science approach, the analysis shows how many “normal” things came together — rushed training, poor visibility, tired staff, missing safety equipment, weak rules, money pressure, and
SH274: When Do We Stop Asking “Why?”
This episode explores why asking “why did this happen?” after a diving accident is important — but not enough on its own. It explains that investigations often stop too early, not because everything is understood, but because people reach a point that feels comfortable, simple, or easy to fix. Many reports focus on equipment failures or individual mistakes, while deeper causes like pressure, workl
SH273: What story gets told? What words are used? Who gets to the tell the multiple stories?
This episode looks at two very different ways of telling the same tragic story — the death of a 12-year-old girl during a scuba training dive in Texas — and why the way we tell these stories matters for real safety. The first version focuses on blame, emotion, and individual failure, which feels powerful but pushes people toward anger instead of learning. The second version looks at how the whole
SH272: Seeing what is ‘unseen’: applying human factors to citizen science
This episode explores how divers often overlook the richness of underwater environments they think they already know, and how greater awareness can transform both safety and understanding. Using real examples from rivers, lakes, and glacial landscapes, it shows how underwater spaces are shaped by nature, history, and human activity, even when they look simple on the surface. The episode explains h
SH271: When the Story Hurts Too Much to Change
This episode explores why diving accidents involving children create such strong reactions and deep divisions, and how our need for simple explanations often gets in the way of real learning. It explains how people quickly form strong opinions after tragedies, not because they don’t care about safety, but because events like this challenge their beliefs about control, training, and protection. To
SH270: Safe diving starts from the system. Not from the human.
This episode explores how accidents in diving and other high-risk jobs are often blamed on individuals, even when the real causes are deeper problems in the system, such as pressure, poor communication, lack of support, broken procedures, and unsafe cultures. Using real examples from rescue diving, healthcare, aviation, and emergency services, it shows how “blame cultures” create fear, silence, an
SH269: What Is the Purpose of an Investigation in Diving?
This episode looks at how diving accidents are often explained in simple ways that blame individuals, instead of exploring the deeper systems and pressures that shape what really happens. It explains that investigations are not just about facts, but about meaning, comfort, and fear after someone has died, which often leads to stories that focus on “human error” instead of learning. Using real exam
SH268: The Hidden Cost of "Never Show Weakness": Why Hiding Instructor Errors Undermines Dive Safety
This blog explains why hiding mistakes in diving training and leadership is dangerous, and why honesty builds safer, stronger teams. Using real examples from military service and diving, it shows that when leaders admit errors, teams learn faster, trust each other more, and make better decisions. When mistakes are hidden, people stop asking questions, small problems become normal, and serious risk
SH267: “Diver's depression” It's time to tackle stigma and taboos
This episode explores the link between diving, mental health, and trust, showing that anxiety, depression, and therapy are common parts of normal life and are also present in the diving community. Many divers hide mental health challenges or medication use because they fear judgment, exclusion, or losing opportunities, which actually makes diving less safe. The key message is that safety underwate
SH266: A Review of 2025. Looking Forward to 2026.
This episode looks back on a big year for Human Factors in Diving and shares what The Human Diver community has achieved, along with what’s coming next. It highlights how real change in diving doesn’t come from new gear or technology, but from learning, reflection, and improving how people think, communicate, and make decisions. The episode celebrates global training programmes, online courses, po
SH265: Analysis from a Human Factors Perspective - Cave Double Fatality: Calimba 2004
This episode looks at a real cave diving tragedy and uses it to explain how accidents often happen because of human thinking, not just broken rules or bad equipment. Instead of focusing on blame, it shows how choices made underwater can seem logical at the time, even when they lead to disaster. The episode explores key ideas like awareness, decision-making, teamwork, leadership, and psychological
SH264: Teamwork in Diving: The Power of Clear Roles & Task Division
This episode explains that real teamwork in diving is much more than just staying close to your buddy. Using a real incident where a diver tried to handle a serious problem alone, it shows how this can create new risks for the whole team. The key idea is that strong teams are built through clear roles, planning, and communication, not luck. When everyone knows who is responsible for things like na
SH263: The desperate need for blame
This episode tells the story of a calm, well-planned dive that still ended with an unexpected case of decompression sickness, and uses it to explore how people react when things go wrong. Even when the dive was conservative, the team experienced, and everything seemed to be done “right,” a diver still became unwell — showing that not all risks can be controlled or explained. The episode looks at o
SH262: So what can we do? The Practical Steps/Tools for Bringing HF/NTS into Diving
This episode explains how Non-Technical Skills (NTS) and Human Factors in Diving (HFiD) only work when they become part of everyday diving culture, not just a course or a checklist. Real safety comes from how divers think, communicate, make decisions, and work as teams, not just from technical skills or equipment. It highlights the importance of shared language, reducing hierarchy, encouraging peo
SH261: “Would you speak up to the Commander?” - “No. They already know” - Making changes to your team's diving
This episode explores why real learning in diving is harder than buying new gear or following checklists. It explains how divers, like firefighters and oil and gas workers, often struggle to change habits, question tradition, and speak up in teams, even when something feels wrong. The problem isn’t a lack of training or information, but culture — things like hierarchy, fear of blame, and not feeli
SH260: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Decision Making. To manage risk, we have to be exposed to uncertainty and harm
This episode looks at the limits of planning and equipment in technical and cave diving, and explains why true safety comes from adaptability, not control. Using a powerful real-life cave diving story, it shows how even the best plans can fail, and how survival often depends on calm thinking, core skills, and the ability to solve problems when things go wrong. The key idea is that risk can’t be re
SH259: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Situation Awareness. Risk Perception is a critical skill - Experience Doesn’t Equal Judgement
This episode challenges the idea that more experience automatically means safer diving. Using research from aviation and real diving examples, it shows that what really matters is not how many dives you’ve done, but how you see and understand risk. Two people can face the same situation and make very different choices, not because of skill, but because of how dangerous it feels to them. The key me
SH258: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Psychological Safety and Just Culture
This episode explores how everyday conversations between divers, even simple small talk, play a powerful role in building trust and safety. It introduces the idea of the “Communication Triangle,” showing how teams move from polite, surface-level talk to deeper, more honest communication that allows people to speak up, share concerns, and admit mistakes. Using real diving examples, it shows how acc
SH257: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Performance Influencing Factors - Even the best of us are only human
Technical diving often looks like it’s all about planning, rules, and equipment, but the biggest risk factor is still the human. This episode explores how “Performance Influencing Factors” (PIFs) like fatigue, stress, environment, team pressure, and mental overload can affect even experienced divers, sometimes without them realising it. Using a real dive story, it shows how small human issues can
SH256: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers – Leadership
This episode looks at the idea that all technical divers are leaders, even if they don’t see themselves that way, because their experience, behaviour, and decisions influence others in the water. Leadership in diving isn’t about giving orders; it’s about building trust, staying calm, communicating clearly, and creating an environment where everyone feels safe to speak up. The discussion explains h
SH255: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Teamwork - It's more than a back up plan
This episode explores why teamwork is a critical survival skill in technical diving, not just a nice extra. Using a real training story where a teammate caught a dangerous mistake during an emergency drill, it shows how even well-trained divers can fail under pressure and why a strong team can prevent small errors from becoming fatal. Technical diving involves higher risks, more complex equipment,
SH254: Top Tips for Technical/Cave Divers: Communication
This episode looks at why communication in technical and cave diving often fails, even between skilled and experienced divers. Using two real dive stories, it shows how serious risks can come from small breakdowns, such as mislabelled gas bottles or missed signals during a valve problem, and how teams often rely on assumptions rather than confirmation. A key message is that sending a message does
SH253: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Decision Making
This episode explores how instructor decisions in diving are shaped long before an accident happens, often by habit, pressure, and past success rather than careful thought. Using real-world accounts from a fatal training dive in poor visibility, it shows how instructors often rely on fast, instinctive decision-making that usually works but can fail when conditions are complex, rushed, or risky. Wh
SH252: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Situation Awareness
This episode looks at a common teaching challenge: when a student can complete the required skills but still isn’t ready to be certified. Through a personal story, the author explains how the missing piece was situation awareness — the ability to notice what’s happening, understand what it means, and think ahead. The student was using so much mental effort just to manage basic skills like buoyancy
SH251: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Psychological Safety and the Thumb Rule
This episode explores why calling a dive can be harder in practice than the famous “any diver can end any dive” rule suggests, especially for instructors under time, money, or reputation pressure. Using a real cave-diving example, the blog shows how small equipment issues and disrupted routines created warning signs that the team wasn’t ready, even though nothing had gone seriously wrong yet. The
SH250: Top tips for Diving Instructors: Performance Influencing Factors
This episode looks at why students — and instructors — sometimes struggle in dive training, even when the skills seem simple, and explains how performance is shaped by more than just ability. Factors like fatigue, stress, cold, time pressure, anxiety, social expectations, and difficult conditions can all affect how people think, learn, and perform. When these pressures stack up, students may panic
SH249: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Leadership - Creating the space for others to be heard
This episode explores why people in diving often don’t speak up, even when something feels unsafe, and why being “heard” matters just as much as being allowed to talk. Using a real boat-diving story, it shows how authority gaps, hero culture, social media status, and tight-knit groups can silence both new and experienced divers. Research highlights that people stay quiet mainly because they fear l
SH248: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Teamwork
This episode looks at what happens when a dive “team” isn’t really functioning as a team, using a real training story where strong individual skills weren’t enough to prevent things going wrong under stress. The key lesson is that the problem wasn’t technical ability, but poor teamwork: misaligned goals, weak communication, low trust, and a lack of shared awareness. Research shows that what really
SH247: At a system level, we don't learn from diving fatalities, and here's why
This episode explains why the diving industry struggles to learn from fatalities and argues that the problem is not one bad decision or one person, but the whole system. Using the death of 18-year-old diver Linnea Mills as an example, it shows how normal people, doing what made sense at the time, can be caught by gaps in training, supervision, equipment, communication, and emergency planning. The
SH246: Top tips for Diving Instructors: Communication (especially the difficult kind)
Many dive instructors are facing a growing challenge: some students believe that paying for a course means they are guaranteed a certification card. This can lead to difficult conversations when an instructor decides a student needs more time to reach a safe and confident level, even if they attended all sessions and tried hard. This episode explores why clear communication is essential, especiall
SH245: Asking Why. Telling Stories. Owning Accountability
This episode explores how the diving community responds when something goes badly wrong and why the choice between blame and learning really matters. Drawing on three university research projects, it explains that after serious incidents people look for meaning through justice, learning, and sometimes punishment, and that visible learning can itself be a form of justice. The episode looks at why d
SH244: Top Tips for Beginner Divers: Decision Making
This episode looks at how many decisions can happen during a single dive and why decision-making is often harder underwater, especially for new divers. Using a real-world wreck dive story, it shows how focus on a goal, strong currents, stress, and missed checks can slowly lead to poor outcomes, even when basic skills are sound. The discussion explains how pressure, mental overload, common thinking
SH243: Top Tips for Beginner Divers: Situation Awareness
In this episode, we explore situation awareness, a key skill that helps divers notice what’s happening around them, understand what it means, and anticipate what might happen next. Using a personal story from a first open water dive, we show how beginners often rely on instructors to manage the “big picture” and don’t realise how much awareness is needed until they dive on their own. The episode e
