Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving

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...

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 safe...

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, he...

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 c...

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...

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...

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 expe...

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...

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 industry to learn from incidents because insurers hold much of the claims data but cannot normally share it with training agencies. At the same time, qualifications and certificates may give little indication of a diver or instructor’s actu...

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 how staff handle mistakes, customer complaints, disagreements and everyday decisions. He reflects on how his own Human Factors journey began in 2022, when he realised that his behaviour under pressure could affect those around him, and how this led to a f...

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 triggers the early signs of panic. With the calm assistance of an experienced diver, she completes the dive and later reflects on how the experience connects directly to their research into detecting stress underwater. Through structured debriefs, practical training and an environment where people can...

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 margins over time. The episode asks whether we are recognising skill or simply rewarding luck, and looks at the responsibility of instructors, dive centres and teammates to create an environment where people can challenge decisions and stop a dive...

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 considering the conditions, information, equipment and pressures people were working with. Using a hypothetical case of a dive boat leaving two divers behind, we compare traditional incident investigations with a more curious approach...

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 completes a dive and one that achieves its mission safely. The project brought together divers, archaeologists, historians, military agencies, local authorities and vessel crews from different backgrounds and countries, creating the kind of complex environment where human performance...

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 diver behaviour, why many divers avoid formal reporting channels, and what other high-risk industries have done to build real learning systems. Gareth also shares how The Human Diver, the LEODSI investigation framework, and new industry standards are helping shift the focus...

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 explains how everyday decisions, accepted norms, and human psychology combine to create risk over time. It also examines what divers, teams, and the wider diving community can do to recognise these patterns, challenge unsafe habits, encourage open communication, and build a culture...

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, the role of accountability, compassion, and forgiveness, and why repairing systems is more effective than simply punishing individuals. It also introduces Professor Sidney Dekker's Restorative Just Culture Checklist as a practical tool...

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 understanding what happened, supporting everyone affected, rebuilding trust, and fixing the conditions that allowed the event to occur. The discussion also introduces Professor Sidney Dekker's Restorative Just Culture Checklist as a practical tool for helping individuals and organisations move from blame to...

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 without simply assigning blame or letting people off the hook. The discussion shows why complex incidents usually have many interacting causes, why understanding local decision-making is essential for improving safety, and how separating learning from punishment...

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 or instructors because these are the easiest problems to address, while deeper issues such as organisational culture, commercial pressures, and industry practices are left unexplored. The episode examines how different people can interpret the same event in ver...

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 discussion highlights how unsafe practices can become normal when they repeatedly appear to work, and why serious accidents often reveal long-standing weaknesses that existed long before the final event. Rather than asking "Who is at fault?", the episode...

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 incident occurs. The episode also examines why teams often stay silent when they notice problems, how social pressure affects decision-making, and why genuine learning requires understanding the reality of how diving actually works rather than relying on simple explanations. Ultimately, it challenges dive...

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, procedures, training, resources, organisational culture, operational norms, and the pressures influencing decisions. The episode highlights how experienced scientific divers can still face hidden competence gaps when moving into technical cave environments, how commercial and research pressures can shape risk-taking, and...

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 and focus instead on understanding the conditions, decisions, and systems that may have shaped the outcome. It examines the difference between backward-looking accountability, which seeks someone to blame, and forward-looking accountability, which asks better questions about...

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 often made sense to those involved at the time, influenced by pressures such as authority, identity, time, and the expectation to “get the job done.” The episode introduces the PETTEOT framework—Person(s), Environment, Tasks, Tools and Technology, External Influences, Organisation, and Time—as a way to...

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 guide, creating a closed system that can protect institutions legally while limiting opportunities for deeper learning and improvement. It also looks at why accident investigations often focus on individual mistakes rather than questioning whether the procedures, training, or standards themselves are fit...

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 both life support and scientific tasks under pressure. Drawing on lessons from aviation, healthcare, and other high-risk industries, the discussion highlights key challenges such as cognitive overload, distributed situational awareness, and authority gradients that can prevent divers from speaking up or adapting effectively when conditions change...

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 others, or challenge more experienced teammates. Drawing on research into speaking up, psychological safety, and stop-work authority, the episode examines why divers often stay silent even when they feel uncomfortable, and why near-misses are rarely repo...

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 shape performance like equipment, procedures, and team dynamics, and finally viewing diving as a complex socio-technical system where people, technology, organisations, and the environment all interact. While the first three approaches can offer useful insights, they often miss...

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 judgement, making complex situations seem obvious after the fact. As a result, important factors like conditions, pressures, communication, and decision-making context are ignored, limiting real learning. Over time, this blame-focused culture encourages people to share less detail or avoid posting...

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. Research shows that most contributing factors in incidents come from these “upstream” conditions—such as training culture, social pressure, and organisational practices—rather than the diver’s final actions. A major gap is the lack of training and assessment in non-technical skills, which are critical for managing...

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 that fear is not based on real outcomes. The result is weak feedback loops, where lessons from real experiences never reach the people who design training or shape the culture. The blog suggests shifting focu...

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 reputation, which stops them from speaking openly, particularly in public settings. At the same time, there is confusion about key ideas like what counts as an “incident,” what “risk” really means, and what a “just culture” looks like, with very few divers linking incidents to learning. The st...

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 strong reporting systems, regulation, and reliable data, so decisions are often based on uncertainty rather than evidence. Existing reports tend to focus on immediate causes like equipment failure or diver error, but miss the wider social, organisational, and environmental 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 blaming the guide, the analysis explores how things made sense at the time, including authority gradients that stopped the divers from questioning decisions, fatigue from multiple dives, pressure to show something impressive, and increasing...

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 gear, and commercial expectations. Using models like ECOM and COCOM, the episode explains how an instructor’s attention can be consumed by immediate tasks, leaving no capacity to monitor the bigger picture or reassess whether a dive s...

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, COCOM and ECOM, the discussion explains how control shifts from broad, strategic thinking to narrow, reactive behavior as workload rises, and how different layers of awareness—from basic task execution to overall planning—can break down...

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, sticking to an original plan despite changing conditions, or only noticing information that supports what we already believe. In diving, where conditions vary and feedback is often limited, these biases can quietly increase risk. The key is not to av...

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 resources. When one of these areas is weak or missing, problems appear—such as highly skilled divers working in silence, well-coordinated teams lacking critical skills, or strong systems where people feel unable to challenge decisions. True resilience happens when all three are aligned, al...

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 elements—people, environment, tasks, equipment, external pressures, organisation, and time—to understand how decisions made sense in the moment and how conditions combined to produce the result. Instead of blaming individuals, LEODSI focuses on why events unfolded the way th...