UNDER PRESSURE - THE BOOK

In my opinion, Gareth Lock’s “Under Pressure:  Diving Deeper with Human Factors” is a book that should be read by all divers, especially those taking or teaching technical diving.  Traditionally, scuba diving training has emphasized “technical skills” – mask clearing, buoyancy control, gas switching, laying line, and so forth.  However, diving is a systematic endeavor that involves not just the diver but also the instructor, the training agencies, equipment manufacturers, insurance companies, etc.  These “nontechnical skills” or “human factors” are equally, if not more important, to diving safety. As long as we only look at the diver and not the system as a whole, we are unlikely to make diving safer.  Lock presents this systematic approach to diving safety with chapters on a variety of subjects including such important topics as mindset, “human error”, risk management, “just culture”, situational awareness, and communication in a very concise, yet thorough approach with anecdotes by leading members of the diving community.  I look forward to using all of these concepts as I teach future courses.

Under Pressure is not a light read. Given the subject it should not be. It's a work that requires the reader to change what may be their mindset about the risks and mitigation of such hazards as are encountered under water. As a recreational and technical instructor who has made diver safety and training a personal mission, Gareth's work is a breath of fresh air in an industry that seems hell bent on taking the fast lane to mediocrity. Agencies dumb down recreational courses. Fun is promoted over safety and education. Skill requirements are designed to breed complacency and promote the normalization of deviance that leads to accidents. Throughout the book are examples of scenarios that did not have to happen in the first place. As well as others that initially were not the fault of the diver, but their response was less than optimal due to a lack of education, understanding, and experience dealing with such events under controlled conditions. The latter leads to a lack of clear judgment when a problem occurs and a deficiency of muscle memory. Gareth analyzes these events and the reactions to them in detail. Not stopping there, a root cause analysis provides the reader with a clear understanding of the events and actions or inaction that led to them. This provides a path to understanding and applying these lessons to the readers own dive should they choose to. I know how hard it is as an author to say everything you want to in a limited amount of space. Trying to do that and save lives is even harder. That's what this work has the potential to do. Save lives. It will require the reader to take some time and open their mind. In some cases they will need to make, perhaps painful, honest appraisals of their own attitudes, knowledge, and skill level. It will be worth it. It may also force them to look at their previous training and see how much was left out or just plain wrong from a planning and risk management standpoint. That also will be worth doing. I want to thank Gareth for producing a work that will hopefully make my job and mission a bit easier. Dive Safe.

After reading “Under Pressure”, the most notable takeaway for me was the breakdown and analysis of the incident narratives. Nearly all of the narratives are from real divers who I was familiar with and/or whose work I had admired for years. As they detail the events surrounding their own personal diving incidents, Gareth employs his experience and knowledge of human factors/non-technical skills to illustrate to the reader that the causes behind diving incidents are not so neatly categorized.

While the vast majority of diving incidents are chalked up to “human error”, the reality is that human error is always present and to learn from the incident we need to learn the why’s and how’s behind the human error. In other words, we are going to fail, but we need to learn how to fail safely. “Under Pressure” explains how human factors/non-technical skills are used to accomplish this and how they affect our diving. Once these are identified Gareth also gives the reader the tools to develop these skills through practice and evaluation exercises.

After more than thirty years of diving I have found very few books that will impact one’s diving enjoyment and safety as this book. “Under Pressure” is a handbook for increasing diver safety through management of risk and uncertainty. It will give you a new way to examine and understand diving incidents so that we may actually learn from them instead of placing blame. This is a must have for every serious diver’s library.

Under Pressure - diving deeper with human Factors is a well presented, coherent and much needed book. It looks at performance development and the by-product of safety that arises from high performance. This book also seeks to bring about a change in attitude in technical diving, recreational diving and freediving mentality. A change to a ‘Just Culture’, where incidents can be discussed and with that comes accelerated learning.

The books biggest strength is the use of appropriate analogies and case studies from incidents and situations that have occurred within, and outside of the diving industry to aid understanding of what can be quite a technical subject. As more divers adopt the Just Culture, more opportunities for learning will exist and safety further improved.

I think this is a missing link in our diver education systems and hope one day it will be taught in mainstream diving courses from entry level all the way to the extreme cutting edge end of our sports.

I have had the privilege of working with Gareth and taking one of his classes. Now having the opportunity to read his book Under pressure highlights the importance of all the little mistakes we do because we either have no situational awareness, excellent communication or even going solo instead of working as a team. I have not been so active as a dive leader, so I haven’t been involved in any major incidents but A lot of things I have taken for granted outside of diving like arriving at work presuming the ambulance crew before me had restocked the ambulance with life-saving equipment and realizing that they had just come back on a late shift and had no time to stock up and then being called out to a severe accident not having the right equipment to deal with the incident, why because I should have checked before I left. That's just one of those “human errors” in the book. Gareths book makes you think and wise up to what could go wrong and be able to change that mindset. Thank you, Gareth for the insight!

“Under Pressure:Diving Deeper with Human Factors is a genuine game changer. There are many books about decompression theory, diving medicine and advanced diving techniques, but this is the only text that looks into the incredibly significant impact of Human Factors within diving. 

Gareth does a great job of taking the newest ideas in the fields of psychology, human behaviours and accident analysis and making them both entertaining and relevant to divers. The case studies from some well known diving personalities are fascinating and bring the book alive, illustrating some of the complex human factors concepts in a most accessible way.

If you want to improve your diving, it is hard to think of a more cost effective way to do it than reading this book. If every diving course included a copy, recreational and technical diving would be a great deal safer and more enjoyable. If you are a diver, know a diver or want to be a diver: read it!”

Reading ‘Under Pressure’ is a reassuring and humbling experience. Reassuring because it narrates many scenarios you could have been in but you were not because you used knowledge, common sense and gut-feelings to make a decision, a decision that often meant you had to stand tall facing peer pressure to do something different. Humbling because through the testimonials you learn that it doesn’t matter the number of dives you have or that you have a vast amount of experience, the combined decisions in a team and the operating conditions can always turn a great dive into a true challenge. 

‘Under Pressure’ is a must read for every diver and every instructor, to become more aware than you thought you could be so that your learning, processing and instinct come together to contribute to the best outcome when you’re faced with critical decisions which need to be made quickly and while under pressure. Even more important though, the knowledge contained within this book will help you avoid being in a situation where you need those skills!

Why you should read this book!

Well, in the simplest terms, it illustrates — graphically — the huge variety of pratfalls waiting to pounce on divers who don’t follow “best-practice.” More importantly, perhaps, it uses examples from so-called “expert” and “professional” divers to show that the old cliches about complacency and experience are founded in fact. 

Moreover, Gareth has a knack for looking for and finding the root causes of imprudent gaffes that have the potential to kill. Rather than stopping at a blanket statement that: “Human error was the cause,” he’s made a detailed and focused study of what human error actually means and — of considerable value to you, me, and everyone else in the diving community — suggestions on how to stop it happening to us. 

And of course, all that may just save lives; perhaps yours.