Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving13 Jun

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, 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 under pressure. It highlights that mistakes are often not about poor decisions, but about limited cognitive resources in the moment. The episode also emphasizes the importance of good preparation, clear decision thresholds, teamwork, and deliberate pauses to manage workload, while showing how reflection after the dive helps improve future performance. Ultimately, it reframes the difference between novice and experienced divers as the ability to manage attention and maintain the bigger picture, not just technical skill.

Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/the-picture-went-dark

Links: A 2026 study in Safety Science by Woltjer and colleagues: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753526000822

Part two: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/the-obvious-thing-nobody-noticed

Tags: English| Sense-making, Decision-making, & Psychology

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(293)

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 individua...

4 Jul 22min

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 quie...

1 Jul 14min

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 interv...

27 Jun 13min

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 mist...

24 Jun 12min

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, in...

20 Jun 24min

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, u...

17 Jun 15min

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 ofte...

10 Jun 10min