It is this balance of risks that is often hard to understand when something goes wrong and a diver is killed, injured or has a really “scary” moment. We often forget that there are ever-present, low probability, high consequence risks whenever we go diving. This article will explain some of the challenges divers face when asked to take “personal responsibility” when they go diving and why. As with many things involving human factors and decision-making, the simplistic approach does not always help divers make the best choices.

In the last Scuba Confidential column, I took a long, hard look at the buddy system and solo diving. Whatever you may feel about the issues, there are definite benefits—both tangible and intangible—to diving with someone else. We are human beings, after all. We like to share our experiences and we also derive a great deal of emotional security from the company of others. There are also occasions when having a buddy around can be of enormous practical assistance.

Ego simply refers to self and how we feel about ourselves. This results in our thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Where an ego is arrogant, overbearing, misguided or delusional, then bad things can and often do happen. However, having a big ego is not, without a skewed view as above, going to cause any problems—in fact, quite the opposite. Let me explain.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of being involved in some fantastic teams, sometimes in a leadership role, sometimes as an advisor helping to form a great team, and in others, as a team member. These teams have been engaged in pursuing objectives in sport, from international rugby to motorcycle racing and rally driving, through to high-performing teams in business. Over the last few years, I have enjoyed being part of dive teams, particularly in technical diving.

The six divers enter the water together and all descend to 40m where the four “veterans” stop and watch the other two continue on down. At first, all they can see are two streams of bubbles, and then the two streams become one. Then the bubbles stop. They wait. Time passes. They wait a little longer.

There is a significant body of evidence which shows that divers involved in diving incidents often make poor decisions—sounds obvious, doesn’t it? So if it is so obvious, why do we continue to make them? Simple decisions such as continuing a dive when they should have ended it, choosing the ‘wrong’ gas for narcosis/density/decompression reasons, wearing the wrong thermal protection for the conditions, diving with the ‘wrong’ buddies, the list goes on. This article will cover how we make decisions, and more importantly, why we make poor decisions and the pitfalls we encounter when doing so.

But sometimes, particularly when we are feeling a need to prove ourselves or need a sense of approval, it becomes more difficult. Typically, when people think of peer pressure, they are referring to the influence exerted on an individual to engage in “anti-social” (BAD!) behaviors. Peer pressure is often cited as the culprit in smoking, drinking, drug use, dangerous sexual behaviors and eating fast food.

 

We need to be able to raise the awareness and knowledge of those involved in the sport so that they can truly take responsibility for their own actions. Sticking a note in the manual saying that diving is dangerous or on the back of a CCR which says, “This unit can kill you if improperly used”, are not enough. That’s like saying “Drive safely to work” to your partner as they set off in the morning. People don’t get out of bed in the morning and decide, “This seems like a good day to make a monumental, obvious mistake whilst 70m below the surface!”

 

Some of the readers may remember an article I wrote on this subject a couple of years ago, but this one will go into much more depth and give examples of the issues faced in both the scuba diving community and other environments, which have more established safety management system programmes and cultures.