Situational Awareness An Overlooked Skill Commentary

[ejb190]

I love this line of thinking. But SA may be difficult concept to teach. I think the more appropriate thing to teach is task loading. In a dive we are sightseeing, tracking a buddy, navigating, controlling buoyancy, monitoring air, and a dozen other things. You only have so much attention to go around. If something goes wrong in any of those areas or becomes consuming (like photography), our attention goes to that item at the expense of the others. For instance, on a drift dive I lost my weight belt. When I made a choice to go after that belt, tracking my buddy, sightseeing, and air conservation went out the window. You all know better then to use all new gear on a difficult dive. Why? You don't have enough attention to divide between learning a new gear configuration and doing the dive safely.

 

[Stealth Mode]

Very good responses to the concept of situational awareness,I teach several classes directly dealing with S.A.I would like to add that risk management is greatly improved with good S.A. Fire Instructor # xxx782

 

[drrich2]

However what can often be traced to diving error is some level of deficiency in a diver's overall visual and mental sustainment skills, that is keeping focused and fully aware of the situation in which a diver can find themselves.

There is an element of natural aptitude for this. Early in training, trying to maintain buoyancy, clear the mask, keep calm and keep breathing under control, watch the gauges for depth, time & NDL, and oh, yeah, keep a close eye on your buddy & his/her air supply, while trying to operate in strange equipment in a dangerous alien environment with less peripheral vision, lack of directional perception in hearing, and having to deal with 3 dimensional positioning instead of 2-D (since you & others can move up & down) - all lead to task loading. Many people in OW courses can barely juggle this stuff to a marginally mediocre standard; probably not the time to toss another ball in the air to them.

As an introvert, I've been harassed often in life by people who marvel that I don't notice a lot of the irrelevant trivia that goes on around me. I notice a building along the road, and my wife mentions we've been driving by it for months. That sort of thing. My favorite dive buddy is one of those people with good situational awareness. I admit the ability and recognize its utility, but it does not follow that I'm likely to get similarly good at it any time soon, if ever.

This thread reminds me of those discussing the importance of navigation skills. The issues are very similar.

Richard.

 

[supergaijin]

Personally I have focussed on getting breathing under control before all else. IMO Breathing is the first step to a 'good' diver, a quieter diver, a more relaxed diver etc. which should in turn increase SA.

I do try to create an awareness of depth, time and gas use. It can sound a bit 'New Age' but I try to get students visualising the techniques and progressions involved in entries/descents/ascents etc. You should never be surprised when looking at an SPG or computer. Anticipate the dive rather than react to 'events'. Events can be as simple as locating the SPG and figuring out what it says. Many beginner divers change position and kick upwards during this event. "If in doubt... Breathe Out" is written in all student logbooks.

I'd be very interested to learn some more specific skills to increase SA.

 

[TSandM]

Great post, GDI!

I think you have made an excellent point, that we all have limited bandwidth, and if you have too much of yours occupied with basic functions of diving (buoyancy, trim, propulsion) you don't have much left for such parts of SA as keeping track of your navigation, keeping tabs on your buddy, and monitoring your gas and deco status. The more basic diving skills you can relegate to unconscious competence, the more brain you have to do other things with.

Even then, though, it can be difficult to achieve what Sally Swift, a writer about horseback riding, calls "soft eyes". Some of us just want a hard focus, and have to work at broadening our scope of information-gathering. And narcosis, at least for me, can have a truly deleterious effect on the ability to evaluate and process the information that a broad focus brings.

At the cost of a great deal of hard work, I have brought my buoyancy, trim, propulsion and buddy skills to a level where I am pleased with them. But I will struggle with my situational awareness for my entire diving career, because the ability to focus tightly in a distracting environment is of huge value to me in my life out of the water, and a big disadvantage to me in a cave.

 

[clownfishsydney]

I think that situational awareness is something that some people just will never acquire. In my view, most divers do not take notice of their environment before the dive.

For example, if a shore dive, the sea conditions, the tidal flow, the height of the tide and much more. Likewise, when doing a boat dive, if there is a surface current, estimating its strength. On the way down, checking to see if the current increases, taking into account surface conditions so that if rough, minimising any compulsory decompression to make it more comfortable, exiting the water taking into account the bucking of the boat and more.

On the dive itself, well, so much to mention I will not even start.

 

[highdesert]

I've been a competitive cyclist since the mid-80's...30 mph pacelines and 80 bikes inches apart, and riders all around you--SA is critical. Some cyclists are great at this, some mediocre, others poor....
Many people could NEVER ride in a paceline.

I'm in the camp that believes that SA is largely innate. As an ex-competitive roadie and still avid rider, I agree in general with your statement, but I think it's also teachable to an extent. I read an article years ago about city cyclists adopting the behavior of "urban deer" to survive, the crux being that threats can come from anywhere at any time, and survival depended on that constant awareness.

I don't think this happens with an instructor simply telling a student, "Be aware of what's going on around you," but more likely in an environment similar to what you might find in learning advanced martial arts or some Eastern systems of behavior.

 

[drrich2]

Clownfishsidney:

It's worth noting that for some of us, 'taking notice' at the outset is next to useless because we don't retain the info.

It's kind of like in navigation discussions when people talk about, on the return leg of your dive, 'recognizing' some distinctive coral head, etc..., as marking your entry point (talking about shore diving here). I've tried that. First off, unless something is a glaring freak of nature, hardly any look memorably distinctive to me. Secondly, by the end of a dive, my ability to reliably recall and confidently recognize 'Oh, yeah, it's that one' would be pretty much shot.

If I want to remember what something looks like, I take a photo.

So just making a check list of stuff to take mental note of at the outset of a dive, for example, won't cut it for some folks who simply won't retain the info., especially in a way they can process.

I'm not disputing the value of situational awareness, and I imagine most people can cultivate it to some degree. My point is that some peoples' natural aptitude for this is poor, and the end result likely to be mediocre at best.

Richard.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Situational awareness can be ... and is commonly ... taught at every level of diving. As someone above noted, the problem stems from task-loading ... so it stands to reason that a large component of situational awareness boils down to task management ... how to accomplish multiple things that require some degree of mental bandwidth, while paying attention to what's going on around you. In this respect, situational awareness isn't a static skill ... it's a "moving target" that requires effort every time you learn something new, or change something about your diving that requires mental bandwidth.

As with all skills, it's easiest to learn if you begin at the OW level, and apply a few simple concepts to what you're learning. At the entry level I begin with two fundamental theorems ...

1. Visual feedback is your easiest, and primary, source of awareness underwater ... and since you're wearing a mask that inhibits a peripheral vision you've learned to take for granted, it requires a change in behavior that we must actively learn ... the art of turning your head to see what's going on around you.

... and ...

2. There's more to being a dive buddy than simply being in the water with another diver. Communication is a key part of buddy diving.

Applying these two fundamental concepts to how we (instructors) teach and how we (students) learn the "skills" associated with diving helps ingrain situational awareness into everything we do ... and like most skills, SA isn't a discrete skill, it's a fundamental component of overall diving behavior ... much like buoyancy control, it's something we want to ingrain into everything we do underwater and learn to a point where it doesn't require conscious thought and effort.

At the OW level, situational awareness is learned by having students ... from the beginning ... practice keeping track of their dive buddy, familiarizing them with the importance of planning and executing dives together, communicating with each other, actively positioning themselves to be seen, and learning the behavioral fundamentals of diving as a buddy. It's also integrated into simple things we learn at this level such as monitoring your air, depth, and time. This practical application of basic skills trains the diver from the beginning to look around ... and produces a foundation upon which to build awareness skills as an integrated part of everything else you learn ... regardless of the level of your training or the depth of your experience.

Awareness ... like buoyancy control ... is a learned behavior that requires constant practice. Nobody's going to "get it" immediately ... and nobody's going to retain it unless you make an active decision that it matters enough to put in the effort to learn these new behaviors that we need to adapt ourselves to the environment and equipment that we subject ourselves to when we go underwater. Awareness doesn't just "happen" by diving ... you need to make a conscious decision to learn it, and that begins by understanding why it matters ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Doppler]

Interesting to read that SA is starting to surface in discussions about diving skills... I'd like to throw in my vote and say that in my opinion, it's one of the most important skills a diver can have:

From The Six Skills...

<<Now on the face of it &#8220;awareness&#8221; may sound to some of us like a
west-coast, affected latte-drinking, new-age, best friends with Shirley
MacLaine on Facebook sort of thing. All in all probably not something we
readily associate with the apparently uber-macho sport of technical
diving. But being keenly aware is a vital component of safe and
successful technical diving operations.

In advanced diving discussions, we have adopted the term
Situational Awareness (SA) as a sort of catch-all phrase to describe what
we mean when we say: &#8220;keenly aware&#8221;; and probably for good reasons.
SA has been a core concept in high-stress operating environments, such
as the military and aviation, for many years.

In these milieu, SA skills support the ability of individuals to handle
complex and rapidly changing situations in which informed decisions &#8211;
directly relating to personal and team well-being &#8211; need to be made under
tight time constraints. In these high-stress settings, lack of SA is one of
the primary factors in accidents attributed to Human Error.1
For our purposes as technical divers, SA is best described as being
aware of what is happening around you and your team, and understanding
how the flow of events and the actions of team members
will impact your dive&#8217;s goals and objectives; both now and in the near
future. It also encompasses the skill of selecting which bits of
information are relevant and which are not and can be discarded. Put
briefly, SA is the chess-player&#8217;s skill but applied in an environment where
checkmate can result in real physical harm, and not just a wooden game
piece being knocked over sideways.

For example, a technical diver with true SA only looks at his
Submersible Pressure Gauge (SPG) to confirm how much gas is left in
his cylinders; elapsed time and his work level will already have informed
him what pressure reading to expect. Situational Awareness also informs
a good diver with small hints (like body language and trim) how
comfortable his companions are. It will allow him to notice that a team
member may have a piece of kit out of place (a backup light turned on by
pressure for example), usually before that team member does. Awareness
is to know exactly how far from the bottom, sides and top of the
environment being traveled through one&#8217;s fin tips are. Awareness is
knowing &#8211; not guessing &#8211; to within a few dozen litres (say a cubic foot or
two) how much gas is left in your buddy&#8217;s cylinders, as well as your own,
after a 500-metre swim into a high-flow cave. Awareness is focus and
mindfulness, which are necessary assets when one&#8217;s chosen pastime
includes swimming around in water too deep to stand up in.

The most authoritative voice in the study and application of SA is Dr.
Mica Endsley, and I would suggest you find a copy of her white-paper:
Toward a Theory of Situation Awareness in Dynamic Systems
especially if you are interested in digging deeper into SA theory and
practice. But it&#8217;s not required reading. As Endsley says, prehistoric
humans probably had an innate understanding of SA in order to survive.
Essentially, basic situational awareness is hardwired into us all, and we all
have the potential to be wizards at it. We just have to work at pulling the
skill out from behind all the civilized creature-comfort complacency and
cognitive bias that prevents us from bringing it into the game at playtime.
Endsley defines SA as, &#8220;the perception of elements in the
environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of
their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future.&#8221; And
she breaks SA capability into three levels:

1. Perception &#8211; of cues and stimulus from the environment
2. Comprehension &#8211; being able to determine the relevance of
incoming information to one&#8217;s situation and circumstances
3. Projection &#8211; the ability to forecast future situation events and
dynamics>>