SITUATIONAL AWARENESS IS A BASIC DIVE SKILL
The best definition of Situational Awareness is probably that it is the ability to deal with a problem before it’s a problem. It’s the chess-player’s skill. That is: thinking several moves ahead and having a plan for what could happen.
Formally part of basic training for the military, commercial pilots, first responders, and folks in most high-risk industries, it is universally recognized as the foundation for effective decision-making under pressure.
However, telling a classroom full of average divers, even technical divers, that today’s lesson is about situational awareness will probably raise eyebrows and give more than a few the nervous fidgets. The term sounds academic, and way too esoteric for prime time.
But… situational awareness is a deeply practical, highly studied cognitive process used and promoted in everyday operations, where screwing up costs money and causes injury. So, it’s also a good fit for every level of diving not just technical diving or complex overhead diving.
The Three Levels of Situational Awareness
Psychologist and human factors researcher Mica Endsley breaks Situational Awareness into Perception, Comprehension, and Projection. All useful steps for a diver.
Perception (Level 1): Recognizing the situation. Your status, the attributes of your gear, and dynamics of your environment. This means noticing data points like gauge pressures, changing environmental conditions, passing by visual landmarks or waypoints that are part of the plan, and all the subtle signs that things are going as they should… or not.
Comprehension (Level 2): Synthesizing those individual data points to understand what they mean for you and your team in context. For example, realizing that dropping cylinder pressure paired with an increasing distance from safety is not just a number. If the drop is more than you planned for, you may be a developing problem.
Projection (Level 3): Projecting those current dynamics into the near future, you can anticipate what’s going to happen next. This is the highest level of situational awareness. It lets you stay ahead of the curve, pre-empt complications, and change course before a critical failure occurs.
Perhaps the simplest, easiest way to apply the lessons of Situational Awareness to diving is to adopt and adapt the so-called 20-20-20 rule. The 20-20-20 rule is designed to break “autopilot mode” and spot new hazards.
Every 20 minutes: Stop what you are doing and take a brief pause in your routine work. For 20 seconds: Take your eyes off your immediate task to focus entirely on your surroundings without distractions. Look 20 feet around you: Scan a 20-foot radius to check for changes, moving equipment, hazards, or other safety risks.
For diving, adapt this lightly and make it 10-20-10 rule… ten minutes, 20 seconds, ten metres.
Situational awareness is not esoteric. It can help a diver–you, for instance–avoid cognitive bottlenecks, tunnel vision and task fixation, information overload, complacency, and fatigue: it’s a winning strategy.