Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving1 Aug

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, 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 how safety rules may drift away from everyday practice over time. It also explores the dangers of hindsight bias and why meaningful investigations must focus on understanding how decisions made sense to those involved at the time, not simply judging outcomes after the fact. The central message is that accidents rarely come from one bad decision alone, but from interacting conditions within a wider system—and that real learning only happens when we are willing to ask difficult questions before assigning blame.

Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/eight-questions-about-maldives-accident

Links: Blog about the Chac Mool deaths: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/chac-mool-triple-diving-fatality

Avsnitt(312)

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 dive...

7 Okt 16min

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 decisio...

3 Okt 6min

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 Tuls...

30 Sep 8min

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 explai...

23 Sep 14min

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 normalis...

16 Sep 17min

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 rul...

9 Sep 15min

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 p...

2 Sep 4min

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 e...

26 Aug 9min