Applying Human Factors in Scuba Diving with Gareth Lock | S2E17

Jay (00:01.516)
Welcome to the Dive Table. I'm Jay Gardner, and with me today is a very special guest coming all the way from Wiltshire, hope I pronounced that correctly, Wiltshire in the UK, Mr. Gareth Locke. And before I let Gareth introduce himself, I wanna brag on him a little bit. If this is not a name that you know, or you're not familiar with this work, well, one, do get familiar with him. But Gareth is the founder of The Human Diver, which you can find at www.thehumandiver.com.

And the human diver focuses on human factors in diving. They offer courses, training and support for those who want to be kind of the new pioneers in diving excellence. And Gareth has worked to train other instructors in human factors and has been on a mission to apply human factors and master the dive. Gareth is also an author, so we share that in common. I've, I've lived in, in the author cave, uh, had that come out on the other end. Uh, and he wrote under pressure, which was an exploration of this work.

And he is also a documentarian and he released If Only. So Gareth, we're really, really stoked to have you on the show at the Dive Table today. How are you? And I would love for you to introduce yourself to the listeners out there.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (01:16.034)
Thank you, Jay. It's great to be on podcasts, the ability to just engage with people and tell stories and answer questions. One of the real challenges is trying to get these concepts across which people just think, oh, it's just common sense. Surely that's the way things are. Then actually, as you start digging into stories...

And actually that's one of the reasons behind the documentary, if only, was to bring that to life. And the way that I sort of frame a training session based around that documentary is people just think, oh, it's a simple activity, didn't turn his oxygen on, drowned as a consequence. And then you actually go through the documentary and you realize that actually this event started many years beforehand and carried on through. And so that...

That to me is my real passion, is trying to bring a, I'm gonna say a bigger picture, a systems picture to how success and failure happens in diving. And that is, you know, my sort of background is 25 years in the Royal Air Force, I was air crew on Hercules Transport Aircraft, I was a flight commander and instructor on a squadron looking after 125 grown up children. I then went and moved into

systems engineering, flight trials, research and development, and requirements management, and just started to get a bigger picture of what a system is and how people interact. And then sort of 2012 or so, I wrote a white paper about how do we go about improving incident reporting in diving, and that was really taking knowledge from the aviation sector, from oil and gas, where I'd worked as well in healthcare and saying, right.

How do we apply this to diving? That's really where my passion has been. And it's sort of come, you know, sort of full circle. I've delivered training programs, as you said, sort of face-to-face online programs, but I'm now just about finishing a second master's degree at Lund University, looking at what are the factors that influence people to be able to tell stories following an adverse event. And so I've run some focus groups and some interviews, and at the moment I'm just collating that.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (03:36.742)
and going through the data to pull out the themes. Because invariably the organizations say, where's the evidence that human factors, lack of human factors training is an issue? Because there's nothing in the incident reports that say that. It's like, well, that's because nobody's looking for it. Nobody knows what it is. And when people tell stories, they don't tell stories that focus on these non-technical skills, human factors. And ultimately,

Jay (03:52.193)
Mm-hmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (04:04.93)
how it made it easier to do the wrong thing and harder to do the right thing, i.e. there were no human factors and system thinkings in place. So I mean, that's quite a big waffle for an introduction. Sorry, Jay, there we go.

Jay (04:18.464)
I like it, a waffle for an introduction. That's wonderful. No, it's super interesting. And I mean, it's, it's kind of on the nose because, uh, yeah, there, there's a school of thought with a lot of things that says, oh, well that's common sense. Of course you do it that way. Or they didn't apply common sense in that situation. If I was doing it, I would have done it this way. Right. So maybe let's, let's start the show off today with, with just out of the base bones.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (04:36.247)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (04:45.124)
What are human factors? If they're not common sense, if they're not, you know, this thing that is getting reported, what are human factors in a very brief or to the point way that you can explain it?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (04:54.966)
Yeah, sure. So human factors is science, it's predominantly design science. It's about making it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing. So how people interact with other people, how they interact with equipment, how they interact with processes, and how they process that information themselves and their sort of cognitive thoughts. And then what a lot of what I do is a

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (05:25.078)
So what we're talking about here is decision-making, situation awareness, understanding from that situation awareness, again, is a misunderstood term, but situation awareness is the ability to sense stuff, process it, and then project into the future what's likely to happen next. So we collect some information, we make decisions, how we communicate effectively, and how we reduce miscommunication, how teams operate in terms of teamwork, the dynamic nature of that.

how leaders act and respond and how followers and predominantly students respond and these things called performance shaping factors of What makes it harder to do the right thing and that might be stress fatigue It might be confusion. It might be time pressures. So it's all about understanding how if you and I were going to go on a dive How we would set ourselves up for success and how we would preempt and how we would spot

errors or error likely situations developing, trapping the errors before they became catastrophic. And if the errors do occur, what can we do to mitigate them so we don't end up with a loss of life or a serious injury?

Jay (06:38.06)
And kind of the foundation here is not just in diving, right? As you mentioned, there's aeronautics in the medical field, in industrial design, so on and so forth. There are human factors, which is the study. And then there's the application of that, which is both on the design side and like you're saying in the non-technical design side of applying these things. And so the application to scuba diving...

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (06:42.798)
Mm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (06:55.189)
Mm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (07:00.93)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (07:04.556)
I think is what's really interesting, right? It's again, coming from a different perspective, learning tons from all these other places where let's say, you know, there are some more regulations around having to do this versus the option to do it or volunteering, volunteering to do it and diving in a recreation versus an occupational standpoint. And so I think it's, it's a very interesting kind of a crossroads between these things that

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (07:08.77)
dead

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (07:18.668)
Yeah?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (07:31.793)
Mm.

Jay (07:32.004)
that you've taken and said, hey, we can learn from these things and apply it to our, our passions or our recreation, which is, which is diving.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (07:40.65)
Yeah, totally. I mean, just even as a simple thing, and I don't know what the name of the company is, but things like where you have a knob on a cylinder, you unwind the knob so the cylinder's turned on, and you see a red or a green collar that's on the cylinder valve. So now you know it's in a set state. That's Human Factors' design user experience. Or it could be having a brief...

And when we get to the end of the dive brief, instead of saying, okay, has anybody got any questions? Which is a closed question and invariably shuts conversations down. Okay, Jay, tell me what you're gonna do when we get to the bottom of the shot line. What are you expecting to see and which way are we going? And that's an open question. So this range of what human factors is about is huge. And that in itself causes problems because people don't realize that the scope.

Jay (08:36.416)
Yeah. And I think that's a really good point in the sense that, um, it's not just nuance, some, some might say that that's a nuance, right. In the way that you asked that question, but it's actually intent and it's returned, right? What you get back from that. And I think what's really interesting is again, across the spectrum, uh, as, as divers, we might be, uh, you know, a, just thinking about ourselves as a diver, my gear, my body, my enjoyment of the dive.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (08:45.686)
Mm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (08:48.939)
Hmm? Yeah.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (09:01.974)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (09:06.276)
Then we have the layer of the team. Then we have the layer of the classes or courses that we take and the instructors that are there. And some of us are instructors and students and divers and teammates here and, and Insta buddies over here. And there's lots of scenarios we find ourselves in that are very, well, varied for lack of a better word in diving. And so does this apply only to me as the diver thinking about myself or how does it kind of apply across the spectrum of diving?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (09:26.842)
Mmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (09:36.302)
So you just described the different layers within a systems thinking, that you would have the individual diver and their equipment and how they would interact with that. And then you've got the team, as you say. But the team, lots of people think, well, I don't go team diving. I have a buddy. I have an instant buddy. But actually, anybody who's been in a training class has been in a team. Because the instructor is the leader.

of a team of students, they are the followers that are in there. And so instructors need to be taught, in effect, leadership skills and recognizing the power and influence they have over their followers. And that's one of the things that's come from aviation is this thing called the authority gradient. And it came, you know, it was really found in the sort of 60s and 70s and 80s listening to cockpit voice recorders where you had an old school captain.

who was very authoritarian, very directive, and you would have a young copilot or flight engineer. And the copy of voice recorders would show that the copilot and flight engineer knew that something was wrong, but they were unable to speak up. So you draw the parallels with a diving example where you've got an instructor who's been around for ages, we've always done it this way, and the student looks at the instructor and it's like, that kit doesn't look quite right, but you know what? I don't wanna say anything, because the last time I did,

got chewed out. So I'm just going to sit here and stay quiet. And you know what? Well, he's the instructor anyway, so he will solve it and it'll all be okay. So we end up with this sort of diffusion of responsibility. So, you know, there's a team straight away that people don't realize is a team. Then you're dealing with a captain of the boat and they've got responsibilities. And that's an interesting piece because that responsibility is different where you are in the world.

In the States, they're very much the captain, take responsibility for everything that happens, including what happens in the water. Whereas in the UK, the captains of the boats are invariably taxis that are taking you to the dive site, you drop you off, and you sort out your own safety in the water, and they've got to get you back safely on the boat, and then you're their responsibility. So understanding those nuances is also part of human factors and the systems thinking pieces.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (11:59.11)
organizations, how they certify and do quality control. You know, everybody's gonna drift, everybody's gonna make mistakes. So what do you put in place to make sure that we reduce that drift? And organizations have got variable quality when it comes to quality control. Manufacturers, they've got standards, but there are very few human factor standards of interactivity or interaction with equipment because it's not mandated.

But they could really do with that. So yeah, there's lots of things across a, there's me, my equipment, I go diving, and then we've got, when you're in the water, visibility, sound, sight, the sort of how we physically interact with the world. And our reduced processing power because now part of our brain is taken up. So yeah, we do leave part of our brain on the boat.

Jay (12:55.188)
Yeah. Okay. Good. I think this is a, an awesome kind of overview to what, what we mean or what you mean when you say human factors and then how do they, you know, why is this important for, for diving? Uh, you know, I'm just going out to see the pretty fish. Why do I have to think about all these things? Right. And so I thought maybe we do something a little bit different, um, for this podcast today. Uh, I'm sure you've done a ton of podcasts where, where we talk, where we've talked about human factors.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (12:59.798)
Mmm!

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (13:13.344)
Hmm.

Jay (13:23.3)
And I think those are great. Um, but I think if you want to, to learn more about that, uh, there, there's lots out there, including Garret's book that you can read. I thought it'd be fun today instead to maybe take a theoretical application, a scenario based theoretical application. We go from, you know, making the decision to go diving, sitting on my couch. And I say, you know what? I'm going to go diving all the way through the day after, or, or the week after you went diving where. Human factors.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (13:37.475)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (13:52.936)
are at play, maybe where they're blatantly at play, and it's very easy to understand. Maybe where it's a little more under the, or behind the door, you're not sure that they exist, but they're happening. And what are the key things to think about? What are common mistakes that are made during the stage that we should be thinking about to improve? I think ultimately the goal here is to make not only a safer diver, which is absolutely critical,

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (13:56.354)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (14:21.792)
right, to increase our personal safety and our team safety and so on and so forth. But when you're in that mindset, when you're able to understand and think through things, not just training on the equipment, but training the mind, you then are also, I think there's this direct relationship between the safer and more confident we feel, the more enjoyment we get out of that activity. And so I think that that's, at the end of the day, that's really what you're talking about is having more fun.

But we get there through that safety in that portion. So what do you think? You have to do that today?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (14:53.919)
Oh yeah

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (14:57.662)
I'm game on for that. So you tell me the story as it unfolds and I'll start pointing out things. But one of the first things before we start going, I think just to hang on to the bit right at the end, my view is that safety comes as a by-product of high performance. And so it's that bit about comfort. If you are good in terms of technical skills, buoyancy, propulsion, trim, using your equipment, and then you're also

good at non-technical skills, you'll have more capacity to see what's going on and spot the things going wrong before they become an issue. So that's my big thing. Safety, we measure safety by its absence. When things go wrong, you go, that's unsafe. You can't measure safety because it's nothing is there. So that's another challenge we face, but more than happy. Tell me a story about going diving.

and I'll bring out all of the things that I can think of that relate to human factors and why they're important.

Jay (15:58.528)
Yeah, let's have fun with this. This should be a little bit of fun. So first, let's go for it. So let's say Diver A, let's call him Diver Fred. And I apologize if your name is Fred out there. This is not meant to be pointed at you. This is anonymous made up, as I know we're gonna get that email. Hey, I'm Fred and I listen to your show and what the heck, why are you picking on me? So that's not pointed at anybody. But Diver Fred is, you know.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (16:01.494)
Yeah, it's cool. I've not done this one before.

Jay (16:27.704)
hanging out, middle-aged, let's go with the common diver, advanced diver, and he sees a really cool Instagram post of this site.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (16:38.214)
So even before you get here now, here's the first bit of human factors. Advanced diver. What do you mean by advanced diver? So the language we use straight away, it's actually an advanced open water diver. But the way that we interpret the word advanced often means that actually we are way up there and you're an advanced diver. So there's the first thing straight away, the language we use to define certain things.

Jay (17:08.108)
Okay, so you and I are gonna get along brilliantly here because I've had this discussion so many times about master scuba diving and advanced and all of these phrases that we use to label ourselves. The big one I really struggle with is buddy. It's kind of this, it feels like it's downplaying the importance of the fact that diving in a lot of ways, the biggest learning I took away from.

from my training or continue to learn in diving is that diving is a team sport. It's not just a individual sport, but yet we call, you know, imagine if, you know, you're on the football pitch and you go, well, that's my buddy over there and my other buddy over there. And it sounds like a very informal thing, right? Instead of that's my teammate, does that matter? There's another one of the little nuance-y things, the labeling matters.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (17:36.75)
Mm-hmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (17:40.813)
Yes.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (17:52.319)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (18:03.928)
So your diver Fred's now seen some Instagram, right? Tell me what's on the Instagram shot.

Jay (18:08.652)
Yeah, so he sees a nice reef and he knows that it's about the time that his favorite fish comes out on that reef. And so he decides, I'm going to go diving. I'm going to go diving. I've got to figure this out. I want to get in the water. I haven't been in, let's be generous, three months, but I want to go. So how do I do this? What do I do next? Who can I reach out to go diving with?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (18:18.85)
Okay.

Jay (18:38.36)
he starts to formulate a plan in his mind to go out and do a dive.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (18:43.106)
So the first bit then is there are some cognitive biases. If that's his favorite fish, then there is this want to go somewhere. And if he hasn't died for three months, well, what's normal in that sense in terms of what is happening in his experience when he was last diving, because it might be he dived loads of times and then hasn't died for three months. So there's potentially a gap there that we don't know.

So that's going to shape his decision making. Then it's a case of who am I going to go with? Is it a trustworthy organization? How do I build trust? Or is it going to be, I'm just going to pitch up and hopefully I'm going to get a rent-a-buddy or Insta-buddy and we'll see what happens. What's the weather forecast like? And when's the next time he's likely to dive as well? Because if the weather's marginal and he's not diving for a long time again, then actually he's more likely to get in that.

on that dive because we've got something called sunk cost fallacy. And the closer we get to the dive, the harder it is to say no. So the sort of decision making that's going on there, is Fred take a camera with him before? Has he has used a camera or is this a hey, cool, I'm going to take a camera and show my mates what I go and see.

Jay (20:05.484)
Yeah. All right. So, so again, you point out a lot of things that maybe people aren't thinking about when they're making that decision to plan an ad, but in Fred's case, let's just keep on going down this path for him. I'm making this up as we go. So, uh, so it's kind of fun, but, uh,

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (20:20.63)
Well, yeah, so I sort of interpret it as well. Actually, Fred's seen these pictures and he believes that he's a good photographer. He's got a camera, he spent a lot of money on this. And so that's gonna be his prime goal. So there's gonna be some task fixation on that. Now it's then a case of, has he prepared that camera? Has he dived much with it before? And so is his buddy that he's gonna be diving with

I think a photographer as well. So now we end up with sort of potentially same ocean buddies where they're not going to get that done. But they'll think they've got a plan about setting it up. And so he dived with this operator before.

Jay (21:04.213)
Exactly. So he gets.

Jay (21:08.688)
So he has not dove with this operator before, and he posted on the local Scuba photography group on Facebook, and someone said, hey, come out with us, we go diving all the time. Come and take some pictures with us, we'll make sure you get a picture of that particular fish that you wanna see. So Fred's excited.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (21:28.894)
Okay, and is that person who responded a really sort of well-known person as well?

Jay (21:34.336)
Ooh, not to Fred. Let's say not to Fred.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (21:36.202)
Okay, all right, so that's fine. So one of the bits I was, you know, as a leading question then is, if you get a name or somebody who's got some respect and they respond and say, hey, come with me, it's fine. Then it becomes much harder to say, well, I'm not sure about that. You know, how much diving you've got? And it's much easier when somebody's got a reputation to follow through and not necessarily ask the questions and potentially do due diligence.

And that's the same thing when it comes to a dive operator. Fred pitches up at this dive center, and it's plastered with loads of stickers, and it's a five-star center, and whatever. There's this trust that's built straight away. And you sit there, and go, well, all the agencies are the same. What do I know any different? And then people start voting on cost rather than quality, because we don't have an accurate feedback mechanism.

to say, is that a good operator or is that a good operator? If everybody appears to be the same, then price becomes the discriminator when it comes to choosing who we operate with. So I would say that Fred's pitched up at the day, on the day, he's used his gear, he's checked, he's a bit of a diligent diver in that sense, so he has done some preparation the night before. And because he knows that sometimes he forgets things,

He's actually got a checklist that makes sure that he basically ticks off his BC, his fins, his mask, got to snorkel if he wants it. And so he puts all of his stuff in a box and he also takes away, he takes with him some emergency equipment as well because he's heard stories when people have shared, you know, bad news stories where people have got swept off the reef or whatever. So he's using previous knowledge to help shape what's going on.

and he's using a checklist to make sure he doesn't forget something when he gets to the other end. He also knows that actually proverbial, you know, the proverbial can hit the fan and so he knows about his insurance and making sure that that's in place. But he trusts the insurance company to manage the recompression chamber for him. And I know that this is one of the big issues in Florida is the lack of recompression chambers from a health

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (24:01.93)
availability point of view. So, you know, as somebody on the outside, we can sit there, he's diving in Florida, does he know where he's going to get treated if something goes wrong? And yet most people just trust the insurance company to resolve their issues. And that includes when Fred went way offshore to the Galapagos Islands, and he's got his insurance, he's like, hey, it's cool. But nobody has a teleport device. So when things go wrong, you still got a long time before you get into a chamber.

Jay (24:13.645)
Mm-hmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (24:29.986)
So Fred's pitched up at the day. Tell me the rest of the story.

Jay (24:34.092)
Yeah, and I think another interesting point there too, maybe to build on that is the family. Does the family know what's going to happen if something goes wrong? And was there a protocol in place or some sort of communication in place to say, hey, I'm up from the water. The only reason I say these things is because I've had to learn them firsthand. That hey, when I come up and I'm back at the truck from a dive, I need to let my wife know, hey, I'm safe, I'm good, everything's fine.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (24:49.281)
Mm.

Jay (25:03.696)
You know, just with the text, hey, I'm good. I'm up, you know, I'm on the surface. So another piece of this puzzle, right, of thinking through the system.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (25:10.198)
And that's really cool. And the other thing to consider then is, what happens if you don't, because you're outside of cell coverage? And so that's another human factors thing we have, we pattern match. And so if something is different from the pattern, that's how we pick it up. So in that case there is, if you always make a phone call when you finish the dive, but in this particular region, you're out of cell coverage or the cell tower's down, and you've now got it, you don't have coverage, now what do you do?

And so your partner is now worrying, even though you're safe, because they haven't had that closed communication loop. So there are pros and cons of how we manage this and the decision making the communication happens.

Jay (25:56.46)
All right, so Fred gets to the harbor. He's unloading all of his gear onto the boat, you know, and recognizes a few people, folks, but not super, you know, friendly with anybody that doesn't know everybody yet, and strikes up a conversation once he's on the boat about his camera rig, and let's just do the common scuba boat out to the dive site. Someone or a few people start to give advice about how he should reconfigure his rig.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (26:00.726)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (26:26.008)
his camera rig and they're looking at his other things.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (26:29.214)
Yeah, so that's really cool. So yeah, there's always going to be this piece of, well, that's not how I would do it. And invariably, because the community doesn't have, there are some parts of the diving community have standards, clear standards. There are lots of gray areas. And we don't know what's right or wrong because we don't hear when things go wrong, we don't hear those stories. So we...

Again, we go back to pattern matching. We'll look at positions of authority. We'll look at how confident somebody is. We'll look at their equipment and see, oh, that looks streamlined. Or maybe I'll try it. And if they're really convincing with their argument, you might adopt it. Now, the problem is that we should be doing changes. There's nothing wrong with changing your configuration of your gear.

but that should be the only thing that's going on that dive. So in this case here, Fred is going for a photo shoot. So there's gonna be some task loading. So he doesn't really want to change the configuration. That's really what you want as a shore dive with a buddy or a quarry or an inland site where actually you can reduce the number of variables that are happening. And so in this case here, Fred is a little bit unsure.

He's seen this person who's very confident, looks like he's got some cool kit, they've got a big camera, so they must know what they're talking about. And so, the shiny stuff is an influence on how we make those decisions. So Fred takes some of these ideas on, and he starts modifying his gear and he breaks something. But we're already like an hour and a half out from the shore, we're probably about 20 minutes, half an hour.

Jay (28:02.904)
Ha ha ha.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (28:24.054)
to the dive site, the sun's out, it's dead calm, and people are talking about this awesome wreck and the fish are there, and that, you know, he's gonna get some brilliant pictures, but he's just broken something. And it's not catastrophic, but it's something that he thinks, you know what, yeah, I can get away with this. And because he realized that he's fiddling and broken something, he doesn't wanna say anything to anybody else. And so he holds that failure to himself, and he thinks he can hold it, you know,

Jay (28:50.32)
Hmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (28:53.654)
carry it in his head as a working failure. Say it's not a catastrophic thing. What it's done is just eroded the safety margin that they're dealing with. So they start getting closer to the dive site and it's a warm day. So he starts getting geared up and he starts to sort of get hot. And this is always this trade-off, especially in temperate areas where I would say something, if you're talking about the States,

You can end up with very warm air temperatures, but quite cold water temperatures. The same is similar like Malta, where you can end up on doing a deep dive, where you need to have like a 400 gram undersuit to go with a dry suit. But the top side, it's, I'm going to say centigrade, 30 degrees centigrade. What's that? Double plus 30, you know, sort of 85, 90, 95. Where actually you don't want to be wearing that.

Jay (29:45.464)
90 something.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (29:51.358)
And so you're going to get thermal stress and thermal stress reduces your ability to make sound decisions. So we're just about to jump off the back of the boat. Back over to you, Jay. What's happening now?

Jay (30:06.584)
So now Fred decides, hey, you know, that little thing that was broken, it's on my mind, but let's jump in the water and let's make sure, I'm gonna actually make sure it's okay before I descend. And so he jumps off the boat, you know, he's getting his mask on, he's spitting his mask, he's, you know, thinking about his camera, he's got that secured to him in some way, he's thinking about, and he looks around, and all of a sudden everybody's giving the thumbs down. They're ready to go, descend.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (30:33.262)
Mm hmm. Cool, right. Yeah, so it's just like it'll be okay. I've got to follow those through because actually the dive guy said follow me down the currents going to pick up and I need everybody to be close together. So there's a time imperative get down. And so they go down the shot line, the anchor line into the reef to where they're going and the currents quite strong actually. And so Fred's working quite hard.

Jay (30:34.716)
and he didn't get a chance yet to check that little thing.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (31:01.546)
You know, you said he's a sort of middle-aged guy. And I would say as a sweeping generalization, most middle-aged people are not as fit as they could be. And some people are way off where they should be. But, you know, Fred's the sort of slightly below average. So he's working a little bit harder to go down there. And he's still fiddling with his camera to get it sorted. And so his task focus, his awareness is shrunk quite in. And there's a...

a fairly novice diver. He hasn't got huge experience and he doesn't know how to scan the scene, what to look for, what's important. It's a case of follow the camera, follow the guide and we'll get down to the dive site. And so he's working quite hard to get down. And because he hasn't dived in this area here and he's not been at this location, he's got some slightly bigger cylinders. So he wasn't quite sure about what weight to stick on. So he's whacked.

you know, another four or six pounds on just in case, and because he doesn't want to be light at the end. So he's working hard. And so they get down to the reef, they start the fish and he is just super engrossed in his fish. And he's taking pictures and everything's there. And he looks up and it's like, oh, where's everybody else? And so there's this bit of team.

Jay (32:24.357)
Yes.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (32:27.258)
mutual accountability. What we should be doing is looking out for each other. One person takes the shot and this is why photographers, I used to do a lot of underwater photography and I used to get really criticized because I would get tarred with the same brush. Oh, you're a photographer, you don't pay attention. And actually my team diving mentality, my aviation awareness was about take the picture, have a look around, see what's going on, go back. So constantly

appraising what's going on, get back to the task. Now, Fred's not done this. Fred is really busy and he's super happy to get some pictures of the little fish in there. He now looks up and goes, now where's everybody? And his breathing rate starts to pick up. He's now a little bit worried and he is now going, where is everybody? He checks his gas and it's quite a bit lower than he's planned.

in that, on that reef and he was so focused, he didn't know which way or doesn't know which way the upline is back to the wreck. So Fred actually, in fairness to him, he does realize that the visibility is pretty good. So what he does is he comes up and he starts looking for the showers of white, the white columns as people's bubbles are out there.

and he can see them a fair distance off because it's good vis. So he chases after the photographers and the guide and that in hindsight is away from the boat. So take me over, Jay, what's happening now? He's got back to the divers, but it's taken him a few minutes to get there.

Jay (34:18.52)
So he shows back up into the pod of divers and they're in various states. Some of them are focused on a certain part of the reef. Some of them are giving a signal up. Some of them are trying to communicate in other ways. And he latches on to the ones that look the calmest, the ones that are sitting by the reef. And he swims down to them and he sees, oh, there's another little school of these fish that I really wanted to get these pictures of.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (34:39.958)
Mm-hmm.

Jay (34:48.58)
That's what they're looking at. And he has a decision to make. Should I take more photos? Or which group should I follow? What should I do now?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (34:58.766)
Absolutely, and that's not an unusual decision for photographers or anybody who's in an uncertain situation and they've got some task loading. And it takes a real strong frame of mind to sit there and go, you know what? I haven't got enough gas. I'm now gonna basically go and signal to the guide, I need to buddy up and I'm going up. Now, Fred doesn't have a, well, he does actually have a delayed surface marker, boy.

Jay (34:58.978)
Over to you.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (35:28.942)
But he always normally dives to somebody who puts the bag up and the guide buddies him up with somebody else and says, right, you two go, put a bag up from depth, ascend under that, and then we'll be on the surface and they'll come and pick you up. Now, Fred is now worried because he hasn't put a bag up for a while. He's quite unstable in the water and he's working quite hard. And he's now really task loaded. He's got a camera, he's got a clip-off tidy up.

He's got to get the SMB out of his pocket. And in the process he fumbles and he manages to get the spool and because his buoyancy is not sorted, he drops and he gets himself back up again. And this highlights the interdependence between technical skills and non-technical skills. If you've got a really stable platform, your buoyancy sorted, your trim sorted, you're just chilled.

then actually you've got much more capacity to solve other problems. And then you're able to prioritize what's most important. And you can act as a reference for other people. So Fred finally manages to resolve his issue, gets the bag sorted, sends it up, and he and his buddy, teammate, in this case, same ocean buddy really, make a bit of a scrappier scent to the surface.

not really paying attention to the sort of the computer and because the task loaded on the sending you know putting the bag winding the bag up and misses the safety stops that were showing on the computer and hits the surface and just as his reg goes and he runs out of gas now he's fine you know he's on the surface he can breathe cool and you know they've got the bag up

and the boat sends over a zodiac or they, you know, because they've still tied into lines, tied into the reef, they can't leave the wreck site. And that's another thing that happens is where boats have got limited contingency capability if they're tied into a wreck or a reef. And so they've got to have some form of managing this sort of issues when they pop up. So Fred and his buddy, they get in the zodiac and they go back.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (37:49.21)
to the boat and Fred's a bit embarrassed and he's sitting there because he realizes he's screwed up, he's run out of gas, nobody else noticed it, you know what happens underwater stays underwater, Vegas, what happens in Vegas and he's sitting there and he's yeah everything is just fine but he's not happy, his head's not in the right place and

Jay (38:03.869)
Mm-hmm.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (38:16.358)
he doesn't really have a conversation with his buddy. He doesn't know who they were. They just, they were on the trip. So they sort of de-kit and he sort of passes his empty cylinder to one of the crew for the next dive. And he sits there quietly contemplating life, thinking, do I go and do a second dive? So anything else to add on Fred there, Jay?

Jay (38:41.632)
Yes. So I think there's two endings to that story. There's the ending you described there, which is absolutely Fred, really debating whether or not he's going to do that second dive. And even more so, maybe that's happening weeks after. Do I really want to go diving again when it comes back up where that picture comes up? So there's one scenario. Maybe let's give Fred, will be like the alternate ending, choose your own adventure here, books. The other end,

that might happen with Fred is they get the bag sorted. They make their, what did you call it? A salty ascent or a, what did you call it? That was a great phrase, whatever you used. Not a great ascent. And strappy ascent, there it is, I love that, I love that. I'm gonna steal that from you. A scrappy ascent and up they go. They pop their head out of the water. He takes that breath out of his rag and just got below the IP of his regulator. So.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (39:24.874)
Alright scrappy ascent.

Jay (39:39.652)
That tank is pretty empty. And his buddy takes off his mask that he's diving with. He goes, man, that was a great dive. Did you see those fish? And Fred says, yeah, that was a great dive. Awesome. Where's the boat? Where are they coming to get us? I don't know. And they get back on the boat. We get back, he hands the tank off, gets his new tank, and it's ready to go diving on dive number two. So two different endings to that same story.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (40:05.506)
Minimum service interval. Yeah, and so there are many permutations. And I think that's another thing that we can bring out here is that in hindsight, we can join the dots. And so this is an audio podcast, so you can't see what I'm doing at the moment, but I'll try and describe it as best I can. So I'm gonna hold up one finger and then I'll hold four fingers on top of that. So I've got one decision.

that's got four outcomes. Each one of those four outcomes has got four outcomes. And then the next one has got four outcomes as well. So over four layers, I've got 64 potential outcomes that are possible. Now I don't know what those look like, but what I'm gonna do in real time, I'm gonna make the best decision that makes sense to me at that time, given my experience, my goals, my drivers.

my attitude, everything that's there. And I will weave my channel and I'll go to say number seven out of 64, if I went across that way. Now, if number seven is a really bummed decision and I end up with an emergency situation and it all goes horribly wrong, somebody looking on can sit there and go, start at seven, rubbish decision, go down a layer.

rubbish decision, go down a layer, rubbish decision, go down a layer, rubbish decision. And with hindsight, we can join those dots way easier than the person looking forward. And I think the fact that we had that, choose your adventure piece, that's what real life is like. And in hindsight, we can easily pull out, oh, that was stupid, oh, that was stupid. What we really want to understand is what's the local rationality? And how does it make sense for that?

person to do what they did. And the fact that we were playing the pause game and we'd say, right, what's happening next? And what I was doing at that time is trying to explain the rationality of what's involved. But in real time, most people don't even consider that until you start getting a little bit more experienced and one of my instructors who's based out in Abu Dhabi now, she said, Gareth, I hate you, or not hate me, she blames me for viewing the world

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (42:30.178)
differently. She can't see the world the same way now. And I'm like, I'm happy to take that blame. And it's, once you see the world through the lens of systems thinking and human factors, you notice this everywhere, while you're driving while you're flying, while you're walking down the street, when you're in the supermarket, all of these things that are influencing and nudging our behaviors. And when we make a mistake, you sit there and go, what was going on there?

Jay (42:36.044)
Hahaha

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (42:59.178)
What triggered my decision-making process? So Fred's back on his boat. He decides not to go diving, because that's not, he realizes that he had a close call. It was a bit of a rapid ascent. Got no idea what was going on. And he's thinking, my head's probably not in the right place to go and do a dive. Now, others may have done. Fred's just spent, I don't know what boat fees are in the States and normal in the UK, they're about.

50 pounds, about $70. Now if that's a two dive boat or a two dive day and you just spent money on that, there is again these sunk costs. I want to commit to get more diving done. I've paid for this. I'm going to get it done. It's the same as gas in a cylinder. People sit there going, I've paid for that gas. I'm going to breathe it all. But that means you've got no reserve, no redundancy. And in Fred's case, if he'd got back, you know, they're starting their ascent and his buddy

had run out of gas on the ascent, there were a pair of them would have been poorly placed. And again, that's one of those decision-making processes we have. I've ended the dive with, I talk in bar, so normally it'd have 210 bar on the start, and I'd aim to end the dive on a single cylinder, single aluminum 80 cylinder. I would normally end the dive with 80 bar, so just over a third.

from a 30 meter, 100 foot dive, which would mean I would get back on the surface with around about 55, 60 bar. And people sit there going, but that's loads of gas. You sit there, yeah, but I may have ended up doing a gas sharing ascent, but you didn't. Yeah, but I don't know. I can't choose which dives are going to be the gas sharing ascent or not. And therefore my gas reserve is yours.

and your gas reserve is mine. And we go back to that team mentality piece of shared resources that are there.

Jay (44:58.957)
Oh.

Man, we could talk another hour on just that, or another five hours on just that, how much experience that, I mean, yeah.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (45:04.338)
Oh, absolutely. So, yeah, so Fred then goes back home. He you know, he's diligent, he cleans his gear up, he puts it away, dries it gets it ready. He goes finding the bit that's broken and addresses it because he realizes that actually, if he doesn't do it now, he will forget about it. And it will get the same sort of problem. And then he says,

How do I tell somebody about this? Because you know what? There's some learning to be had here. On reflection, I think other people could learn. And he's got a couple of options. He could go to Divers Alert Network with their Diver Instance Report System and speak to Kat and Frauka there, and lodge a report that could help other people. And he doesn't know what to report. So he comes to the Human Diver website and starts looking at some of the biases and the decision-makings that we have. And he includes those in his report.

And that helps other people understand the context in which he was in, not the very simple bit of, he ran out of gas, he was a bit daft, or he was just stupid and he should have known better than that. It's understanding the context in which Fred found himself in, and so he could share that. And going to an organization, I'm going to say a trustworthy organization.

means that he's less likely to get the toxic attacks that appear on Facebook and other social media outlets where you are trying what you think is doing the right thing because you're sharing your learning story and somebody goes, idiot, you should have paid more attention to what was going on. And actually that person has no idea what it's like to be in Fred's

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (46:56.15)
wanting to get the stuff done. So hopefully that's covered a fair amount of the human factors, Jay.

Jay (47:03.692)
Yeah, so that's great. I think, I think obviously for all of you out there in the scuba verse listening, um, you're not Fred, but I'm sure you've had a, maybe it's an experience that, that you can empathize with Fred. Maybe you've had your own situation where you were hyper stressed out a little bit or maybe over task loading or maybe, you know, you ended on, on the boat with that IP, uh, you're the air just above.

the IP of your first stage there. And I think the point in all this, if you go back and listen to it in detail, is to look at how much your brain is impacting this. Now, notice what didn't come out in this story, other than the one little piece of broken gear that by the way, Fred broke, was a gear failure of some sort. Where the BC blew up or the tank, you know,

Um, as soon as it got wet, it lost a thousand PSI or whatever those things might be. Uh, I heard that one a few times. Uh, as soon as it went underwater, all of a sudden all I had was I had 3000, I swear. I know it's to 2000, only a minute into the, that, um, which is true at some level, but also not, uh, was not a gear failure. And I think that this is one of the main points that, that I was hoping to bring out of this time with you, Gareth, is that when you think about diving, a lot of what we

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (48:29.699)
Mmm.

Jay (48:33.484)
do in our dive training is the technical manipulation of gear. And maybe we're also getting some of the theoretical underpinnings of why we use certain gear at certain times or why it does or behaves the way it does. And there's lots of different configurations. So in fact, there are even dedicated classes to this particular type of wing or this particular use of this regulator.

What I think we're seeing in this story of poor Fred here is nothing went wrong with his gear function just as it should. But there were a lot of other things happening in that dive that led to, let's call it Fred's close call, that had nothing to do with him training on gear, other than maybe being a little more familiar with his camera gear. Which again, is a mental manipulation thing, not a...

gear failure thing. So I'd love for maybe you to wrap this up and talk about how do we balance out those things, the difference between when we're training the high intensity we have on manipulating gear or a theoretical understanding of pressure and gas and gas properties against how do we check that our decision making, our communication, right?

the factors that go into our situational awareness, the way that we cooperate or don't cooperate with a team, how do we start to train that aspect of our diving? As well as, and not to say that it's either or, as we're also training the technical side and the theoretical side.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (50:15.426)
No, it's fine.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (50:21.97)
I think the first step is recognizing that there is a cognitive thinking part to diving. Because if you don't accept that, you don't actively acknowledge that, then actually it's really difficult to make some improvements. I put a framework together for a paper that I co-wrote and we were talking about how do surgeons get successful outcomes in the theatre?

we said, you know, most of the surgical training is around about technical skills. And we, we say surgeons are really good at what they do in a technical way. And I draw the parallels with, with the diving, just as you just said, you know, most of the training courses we have are about technical skill acquisition, buoyancy, trim, propulsion, using a rebreather, laying line, whatever, using a camera. Um, but we also pointed out this context. So understanding that we're going to have context that shapes our performance as well.

So it could be the physical environment. That could be cold water, it could be high current, it could be limited visibility, could be surface visibility issues as well. Could be about the task. Are we setting people ourselves up for success or failure? And one of my sort of favorite ones here is, something like a Discover Scuba Diver where you can have four students with you.

but you have to have direct control of those. Well, I have two hands for students, how does that work? And so, there are ways that we can make it easier to set ourselves up for success. Then there's a bit of randomness and luck, and then we've got these non-technical skills that we need to focus on. So the first bit I would say is, be as self-aware as you can be. Reflect on your own mindset, your own sort of, what mood you're in.

If you pitch up at the dive site, having just had a major argument with your wife or your partner or your boyfriend, husband, whatever, you might think, it's great, I can get in the water and I can get away from that surface stuff. It doesn't work like that. Not unless you're really good at partitioning your ideas and you can put it in a box and off you go. So thinking about when you arrive at the site, what's going through my head.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (52:40.802)
visualization, talk through what's going to happen on the dive as part of the brief. And so that helps people having, you know, lines in the sand of what our maximum run time is going to be, what our maximum decompression is going to be, what our minimum gas is going to be, and putting parameters to the team and agree them. So we have a standard for that dive. And then that empowers people to call things out. As part of the briefing stage.

Get people to speak up and question and challenge because if you can get people to Question things during the briefing stage. They're more likely to speak up during the execution phase as opposed to right no questions Brilliant. Let's get ready get in the water Yeah, actually I had a question, but you've just shut me down And so the next bit is right at the end of the brief say to people we're gonna have a debrief We're gonna talk about what went well on the dive and why?

What do we need to improve on and how are we going to do it? So if we set people up before they get in the water to expect to do a debrief at the end, then they might pay a little bit more of attention than if you get out of the water and say, right, we're going to have a debrief. And everybody goes, oh my God, what was it we saw? What were we supposed to pay attention to? So you could have a generic setting things up and say, we're going to have a debrief. Or you might turn around to your buddy and say, you know what?

I want to focus on some particular skills. Can you give me some feedback on this? These are the particular areas that I'm weak in and can you see whether or not I'm adjusting them? So as a teammate, you can set each other up. So we're gonna do the dive and just, I'm gonna say pay attention to what's going on around you, which, you know, people in the water, it's great. You just chill, you see stuff. And then when we finish the dive, going through a structured debrief.

that allows you to create a psychologically safe environment. And there's a link I'll put in the show notes to the debrief guide, create psychological safety, and then talk about what I did well and why, what do I need to improve on and how am I gonna do it? And your team member does the same thing. And then as a team, look at what did we as a team do well and why, and what do we need to improve on and how are we gonna do it? And it's the, why did it go well and how are we gonna improve it?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (55:03.178)
are the important questions. Observations are easy. It's about being specific, being targeted. Oh yeah, team communications was good. That's rubbish for learning. You can't replicate that. The fact that we swam along the side of the wreck and you held the torch beam in front of me so I could see you were there, that was good. Keep on doing that. That's a much more useful piece of feedback than a generic, yeah, team communications was good.

Jay (55:15.12)
Great.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (55:29.47)
And that, you know, then pick up the final part of the debrief is, what do I need to change? What am I going to put forward? What will I do to improve things? And it's an iterative process. It's about doing something, you know, planning it, briefing it, executing it, debriefing it, reflect, create change, carry on doing the same thing. I should give everybody something to work on.

Jay (55:29.5)
Go.

Jay (55:52.504)
Well said, very well said. Well, I feel like Gareth, I could talk to you for hours about this. There's so much that you say, there's so much depth here to the topics that we're talking about. It's hard to pack it into an hour, right? So that's why the humandiver.com exists and the courses exist and so on and so forth. That if you want to unpack more of this, which I highly, highly encourage from Gareth, there's the book, there's the humandiver.com, there's the courses, there's...

So and so forth. And not only that there's talking with your scuba diving friends and teammates and clubs and having these conversations that the bringing them out into the open. So it's not even a requirement to go through a course to start to practice some of these things, right. It's not a certification, right? Gareth.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (56:38.49)
And if you want to really, oh no, not at all. And what I would say, one of the simplest things you can do is if you go onto the human diver site, go up to the top, click on, if only, which is where the documentary is, there's a workbook you can download from there and you can run a workshop at your dive center and your dive club with your buddies. And that will bring out a whole bunch of these human factors in your own diving as well. And it's a...

It's almost a scripted little follow along thing and it's a really powerful tool to get people to think about the diving they do and what they can do to improve it.

Jay (57:16.988)
And think about that, you can do all that while eating popcorn and eating licorice, watching a movie. So I mean, it can get much easier than to apply human factors to start, right? So, oh yes, although sometimes it depends. My three year old's convinced that that's a very good combination. So I think she just doesn't wanna miss out on any of the flavors that might be in the possibility, which is fun.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (57:26.223)
We'll eat licorice and popcorn together though.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (57:40.159)
Yeah.

Jay (57:42.84)
Well, Gareth, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. And like I said, I feel a kindred spirit to a lot of the things that I'm personally passionate about on the diving training aspect of things and how we get better. Right. It's, it is amazing to go and see the reef or to complete a great, you know, big dive that you've been planning or to see that wreck or to get in that cave.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (57:44.604)
Thank you.

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (57:54.786)
you

Jay (58:08.344)
But then there's always the question about how do we continue to get better? How do I get better? How do we better as a team? Um, how do I, uh, give that feedback and receive feedback, um, on the way that I can, I can do that. And so I really appreciate the work that you're doing and I, and I feel like, uh, yeah, we'll have to, uh, grab a, grab a beer and sit and have good conversations at some point, but any parting thoughts from you before we wrap this one up?

Gareth Lock (The Human Diver) (58:28.79)
Yeah, totally brilliant.

No, it's all really good. Thanks, Remesh J. Loved it. Thank you.

Jay (58:38.56)
Awesome. All right. So if you enjoyed this episode and want to be a part of this dive table community, you can join by making sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to your podcast. So you get notified when new episodes drop. You can also go to the new fancy YouTube channel that producer Daniel has been working through. And you can also join us on Facebook at the dive table group. Thanks again for joining us. And we hope to have you back on the next episode of the dive table.