About this episode

The episode discusses the persistent issue of diving fatalities and the need for a shift in focus towards human factors and systemic issues in diving safety.

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 real-world situations under pressure. At the same time, diving lacks an effective system for learning from incidents, as divers are reluctant to report issues to organisations they believe won’t act on them. To improve safety, the industry needs a shared language around human performance, better systems for collecting and learning from data, and a culture that supports open, blame-free discussion—because without addressing these deeper factors, meaningful change is unlikely…

People in this episode

Host: Gareth Lock

Topics covered

• diving safety
• human factors
• communication
• teamwork
• decision-making
• training culture

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Human Diver, DAN, RF4.0

More episodes of Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving

• SH297: CRM, ISO 8804, and Scientific Diving: Opportunities and Existing Materials · July 18, 2026 · 17 min
• SH296: When 'I'm Fine' Isn't True: Speaking Up and Ending the Dive · July 15, 2026 · 13 min
• SH295: Four Ways We Talk About 'Human Factors' in Diving · July 11, 2026 · 12 min
• SH294: Clickbait, trolls and comments. How dive incident posts can teach us — if we let them · July 8, 2026 · 13 min
• SH292: Learning or Blaming: The Choice the Diving Industry Needs to Make. Part 3 of 3. · July 1, 2026 · 15 min
• SH291: What the Data Told Us: Fear, Trust, and the Stories That Never Get Told. Part 2 of 3. · June 27, 2026 · 13 min

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