The cold finds the pinprick tear first. It’s a violation, a sharp, invasive question asked of the skin on my fourth knuckle. For a few seconds, it’s just a curiosity. Then the 66-degree water asserts its thermodynamic dominance, and the chill begins to spiderweb through my hand. My job is to be invisible, a ghost with a scrubber, polishing away algae while sharks and rays glide past like bored royalty. But now, all I can think about is my left hand, the slow-motion theft of heat, and the tiny, stupid mistake that allowed it.
I checked the gloves. I always check the gloves. But did I check them? Or did I just perform the pantomime of checking them, the muscle memory of a task I’ve done
4,600 times, a ritual whose meaning has been eroded by repetition? There’s a difference, and that difference is currently turning my knuckle blue.
The Grand, Seductive Lie of Expertise
It’s funny, the things we get wrong about mastery. We imagine it as a sublime state of effortless flow, of gut instinct and intuitive leaps. I used to think that, too. I’d watch the new divers, fresh out of their certification courses, clutching their laminated checklists with a death grip. They’d read each line aloud, their voices tinny and bubbling through the comms. Check air pressure, 3,216 psi. Check backup regulator. Check weight distribution. It seemed absurd, a crutch for people who couldn’t trust their own minds. I prided myself on moving beyond that, on having a ‘feel’ for the gear, for the water. My pre-dive check was a fluid, silent conversation between my hands and the equipment. Efficient. Professional. Or so I told myself.
⚠️ That’s the lie. That’s the grand, seductive, and dangerous lie of expertise.
My ‘feel’ for the gear didn’t detect the microscopic abrasion near the seam of my glove. My ‘instinct’ didn’t warn me that this particular dive would be the one where the material finally gave way. My well-honed intuition was, in fact, just well-honed complacency. I criticized the rookies in my head, but their plodding, deliberate process was intellectually honest. Mine was an act of ego.
The Unseen Protocols and Normalcy Bias
Sophie G.H. – that’s me – has been doing aquarium maintenance diving for
16 years. I’m the senior diver here, the one they call when a Goliath grouper gets stuck in the decorative reef structure or when a filtration intake needs to be manually cleared
46 feet down. I know the name of every one of the
236 species in this tank. I can tell a sand tiger shark’s mood by the angle of its pectoral fin. Yet here I am, distracted and mildly hypothermic because I couldn’t be bothered to spend an extra 6 seconds stretching the neoprene of my glove and looking, really looking, at it.
It makes you think about all the other invisible systems we rely on. Not just the physical ones, like a glove seam or the O-ring on a regulator. I mean the procedural ones. The protocols. The rules that feel like bureaucratic nonsense until the one day they aren’t. It’s the same impulse that makes someone ignore a two-factor authentication prompt because it’s annoying, or skip stretching before a run because they’ve never pulled a muscle before.
The Devastating Cost of a Tiny Shortcut
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since that day, especially after hearing about what happened to a guy I know who worked at a different facility. His mistake was similar-a small procedural skip, a moment of rushing. But his consequences were devastating. A buoyancy control device failed during a rapid ascent, and the resulting decompression sickness left him with permanent nerve damage. His life changed in a matter of minutes. The company tried to claim it was his fault for not following protocol to the letter, a cruel irony given the pressure they put on everyone to work faster. He had to spend months, not recovering, but fighting. It took a dedicated personal injury lawyer to cut through the corporate nonsense and get him the settlement he needed just to manage his medical care. All from one tiny shortcut.
The Goal: Become the Checklist
The goal is to become the checklist.
It’s not about mindlessly ticking boxes. It’s about internalizing the why behind every single item.
It’s about understanding the chain of causation so intimately that the check is no longer a separate action but an extension of your awareness. It’s knowing that the buckle on your weight belt isn’t just a buckle; it’s a direct response to a specific law of physics and a dozen historical accidents that taught divers a bloody lesson. It’s about having so much respect for the unforgiving nature of reality that you honor the process that keeps you safe within it. The rookies, with their vocalized rituals, were closer to the truth than I was. They were actively building the neural pathways, forging the discipline. I was letting mine decay.
Attention, Respect, Resolution
My hand is numb now, but the job isn’t done. I finish my grid pattern on the main viewing window, the polyurethane scraper making a rhythmic shush-shush against the 16-inch-thick acrylic. The lemon sharks are circling below, unbothered. They operate on a much older, more refined checklist. I finish my section, give the signal to my surface tender, and begin my slow ascent. Every movement is deliberate. I can feel every strap, every hose, every pound of pressure on my body. It doesn’t feel like expertise. It feels like attention. It feels like respect.
Back on the surface, the glove comes off with a wet sigh. A livid white patch on my knuckle is the only evidence. A tiny failure. A massive lesson. I take the glove and drop it into the bin marked for damaged equipment. Tomorrow, before my dive, I will pick up a new pair. And I will check them. I will stretch every seam. I will look for every flaw. I will honor the checklist, not as a command from a supervisor, but as a promise to myself. It’s a quiet act, seen by no one, but it is the whole point.