Why this matters. What ten years of The Human Diver has shown about how diving culture handles failure, what has changed, and what has not. And why this week is different from a course

What separates teams that perform under pressure from teams that fragment. Not theory from a textbook — evidence from environments where the cost of fragmentation is measured in lives.

A direct comparison between traditional incident analysis and a Human and Organisational Performance approach. Steve will walk through the same event twice — once through a blame lens, once through a learning lens — and the difference in what you see is the point.

Research from a US Navy-funded programme combining simulated dive scenarios with in-mask eye-tracking technology and a computational model of diver decisions. What this shows about how experienced divers and novice divers allocate attention at critical moments — and what that means for training.

A practical case for building a dive operation around HF principles, not as an add-on but as the operational foundation. Structured debriefs, psychological safety, communication frameworks, and risk-aware leadership — and how each one improves both safety and commercial performance.

After a bad dive, most people talk. Sometimes that is not enough. Dr Walton works clinically with divers following potentially traumatic events and will explain why some experiences get stuck, what the psychological mechanism looks like, and what actually helps — both for the diver and for the people around them.

What does the global data actually show? DAN's longitudinal surveillance programme draws on incident reports, medical records, media sources, and investigative collaborations to identify the behavioural, organisational, and contextual factors that appear consistently in diving fatalities. The patterns are not what most people assume.

What this day has shown, what the week ahead will do with it, and why the conversation that begins in this room does not have to end when you fly home.

A closer look at the events in Cenote Nariz, Tulum, Mexico in 2024 that resulted in the death of a CCR cave diver. Traditional accident analysis often focuses on the proximal cause and seeks to attribute blame. This presentation will examine the event in depth, focussing on why decisions made sense to those involved and identifying the wider systems, processes and performance shaping factors.

Most divers know what good practice looks like. So why do the same problems keep appearing? Jenny draws on experience from liveaboards, guide work, and mixed-team diving to identify the small, practical HF tools that survive contact with busy schedules, tired divers, and imperfect conditions.

How toxic team dynamics create the conditions for incidents long before any diver enters the water. Authority gradients, fear of conflict, blame culture, and suppressed concerns are not personality problems — they are system outputs. This talk names them, explains their mechanism, and offers practical signals to look for before the damage is done.