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Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Gareth Lock at The Human Diver
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.
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- Today17 min
SH323: 10. Silence on the surface: how toxic relationships within a team jeopardise diving safety
This blog explores how toxic team dynamics can create safety risks in diving operations long before anyone enters the water. In dive centres, liveaboards and other closed environments, unresolved conflict, steep hierarchies, chronic stress and repeated failure to listen to staff can gradually create a culture where people stop speaking up. Over time, unsafe practices can become normal, people may withdraw their effort or act in ways that appear negligent or deliberately harmful, and important warning signs may no longer be reported. The blog uses several examples to show how behaviour that looks irrational or careless from the outside may make more sense when the wider team and organisational context is considered. It also highlights the difference between silence caused by fear and the more dangerous silence caused by resignation, where people have simply stopped believing that speaking up will change anything. A fair and just culture is important, but holding individuals accountable without examining the conditions that shaped their behaviour risks treating the symptoms rather than the causes. The central message is that what happens underwater is often influenced by everything that happened above the waterline first.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/silence-on-the-surface-conf2026Tags: THD-English| THD-Education & Content Type
- 3 days ago22 min
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, asking about goals and risks, and using simple debriefs to understand what happened and improve the next dive. The blog gives examples from teaching, liveaboards, guiding and recreational dives, showing how these techniques can improve psychological safety, communication, teamwork and decision-making without making diving feel like a formal training exercise. Simple questions such as “What’s your goal for this dive?” and “What’s the most likely thing to go wrong?” can reveal important information, while short debriefs can help people understand each other’s decisions and build a shared mental model. It also introduces the idea of “three lemons”, where each diver notices things that increase their own stress, helping them recognise when their capacity is being reduced and when it may be time to stop. The overall message is that knowing what to do is not the same as consistently doing it, and that small, practical changes can turn a good dive into a great one.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/the-herbs-and-spices-of-divingTags: THD-English| THD-HFiD-Conference
- 1 weeks ago7 min
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 and the use of counterfactual language such as “should have” or “could have”. The main practical tool is PETTEOT, which examines the roles of People, Environment, Tasks, Tools and Technology, External Influences, Organisation and Time, helping a team identify how different factors interacted to create pressure or reduce its ability to cope. These interactions may amplify problems, constrain available actions, enable safer behaviour, create a chain of events over time, or protect against a worse outcome. The process also examines barriers and defences to see whether they were missing, ineffective or overwhelmed by the situation. By analysing real diving events as a team, LFEO can reveal insights that may be missed when focusing only on individual actions, and can lead to changes in procedures, training and behaviour. The overall aim is to move from blame to understanding, from isolated errors to system interactions, and from judging the past to improving future performance.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/lfeo-course-conferenceLinks: Blog about the fatality in Cenote Nariz: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/mx-singlefatality-reportA mistake that was examined in detail during the course: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/my-biggest-mistakeFull details for the course: https://www.thehumandiver.com/lfeoTags: THD-English| THD-Learning, Incidents & Just Culture| THD-HFiD-Conference
- 1 weeks ago9 min
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 with more power or status. Labels such as instructor, divemaster, technical diver or dive leader can influence who gets heard, while senior people may not realise how often others choose not to challenge them. The blog argues that this is not mainly a problem of individual courage, but a problem of how teams and organisations are designed. Leaders can make speaking up easier by showing curiosity when someone raises a concern, treating a called dive as good judgement rather than a problem, sharing their own mistakes and doubts, and creating safe ways to discuss near-misses. The goal is not to have more dives called, but to make raising a concern the normal and easy thing to do. Ultimately, people with the most power have the greatest ability to reduce the social cost of speaking up for everyone else.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/ive-got-the-power-speaking-truth-to-powerLinks: Andrzej’s blog about applying Human Factors: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/technical-skills-are-not-enough-you-need-applied-human-factorsNic’s blog about speaking up: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/what-are-we-pretending-not-to-knowThe resources community: https://www.thehumandiver.com/resourcesTgas: THD-English| THD-Sense-making, Decision-making, & Psychology| THD-CRM, Leadership & Teamwork
- 2 weeks ago12 min
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 into place before we can move on. Trauma can interrupt this process, leaving the experience unprocessed and creating a gap between what happened and our ability to understand it. The brain may then search for explanations, influenced by things such as hindsight, negativity and the need to find someone or something to blame. When the experience remains unresolved, people may avoid certain situations, become overly controlling or analytical, or struggle with communication, awareness, decision-making and performance. In diving, particular sights, sensations, places or situations can sometimes trigger an unprocessed experience and cause someone to relive it rather than simply remember it. Understanding how we process difficult experiences is therefore important not only for reducing suffering, but also for recovering the useful lessons they contain. Human Factors can help create an environment where people can process what has happened, learn from it and reduce the risk of further trauma.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/metabolising-experienceLinks: Downloadable summary: https://www.fittodive.org/products/digital_downloads/metabolising-experience-scuba-divingBlog about the conference: https://blog.fittodive.org/2026/06/22/reflecting-on-the-talk-about-trauma-and-stress-in-diving/Tags: THD-English| THD-HFiD-Conference
- 2 weeks ago23 min
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 second incident, the centre had changed how it worked: instructors had completed HFiD: Applied Skills, and the Course Director had made Human Factors part of everyday operations. When a student suffered a fatal heart attack during the second dive, the instructors were able to divide responsibilities, protect the other students, communicate clearly and follow a plan they had already practised. The outcome was tragic, but the response was professional and disciplined. The two incidents show that training does not guarantee a good outcome, but it can influence how well a team adapts when things go wrong. Human Factors skills such as leadership, followership, communication, workload management and shared mental models need to be practised before they are needed, and supported by the wider organisation. They also help teams make sense of an incident afterwards, creating a clearer account of what happened and why decisions made sense at the time. The key lesson is that there is no time to become coordinated during an emergency: teams can only rely on the coordination they have already built.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/technical-skills-are-not-enough-you-need-applied-human-factorsLinks: Dr Laura Walton’s Fit To Dive: https://www.fittodive.org/pages/dive-trauma-resource-indexTags: THD-English| THD-Learning, Incidents & Just Culture| THD-Education & Content Type
- 3 weeks ago7 min
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 complex, context-rich explanations are less likely to attract attention. This can turn real people into simple characters and discourage divers from sharing their own mistakes and near-misses for fear of being criticised. The result is that some of the experiences with the greatest potential for learning may never be shared. The episode argues that accountability and standards still matter, but that understanding should come before judgement: instead of asking who was at fault, we should ask what conditions influenced the decisions people made and how the situation made sense to them at the time. The next time a diving incident appears online, the challenge is to consider whether our contribution is helping the community understand what happened, or simply adding to the cycle of outrage and certainty.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/asking-better-questions-be-curiousTags: THD-English| THD-Learning, Incidents & Just Culture| THD-HFiD-Conference
- 3 weeks ago19 min
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, but these warning signs can build up over time. The money, time and effort already invested in a trip can also make it harder to walk away, while previous successful dives may lead us to believe that taking the same risks is acceptable. The episode explains why knowledge alone is not enough and how divers can make better decisions by agreeing on clear exit criteria before entering the water. It also explores the importance of psychological safety, so people can say “I’m not diving today” without facing pressure or criticism. Ultimately, a good decision should be judged by the information available at the time, not by whether the dive happens to end safely. Knowing when to turn back is a skill that needs to be practised, and sometimes the best dive is the one you never make.Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/quit-while-you-stil-canLinks: Escalation of commitment: https://archive.org/details/entrapmentinesca0000brocTags: THD-English| HITS-Decision-making
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About Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving
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.
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