From high-altitude lakes to submerged heritage—team diving for exploration, research, and conservation

Human divers remain irreplaceable fine-scale observers in aquatic research and exploration. Beyond scientific data acquisition, they function as adaptive sensors operating within complex, dynamic environments. Yet narratives of discoveries often emphasise sites and findings, while overlooking the operational architecture that makes such work possible: team structure, human factors, decision-making heuristics, and safety culture. This talk examines diving operations conducted across contrasting contexts—from high-altitude Andean lakes to cold-water wrecks in the Baltic, and polar benthic habitats. Although ecologically and historically distinct, these environments share operational challenges: physiological stressors, environmental uncertainty, logistical constraints, and elevated cognitive load. High-altitude lakes serve as climate-sensitiveecological systems and cultural landscapes that shaped ancient Andean civilisations. In opposite hemispheres, submerged heritage sites—such as wartime wrecks—represent intersections of archaeology, environmental risk, and technical diving practice. In both cases, effective exploration and documentation (including underwater photogrammetry and biological sampling) depend less on individual capabilities and more on structured team protocols, communication loops, and disciplined debriefing practices. Drawing from personal logbooks and expedition case studies, I will discuss how feedback systems, psychologically safe team environments, and non-technicalskills integrate with decompression strategies and technical configurations to enable sustainable research operations. Recognising the diver not merely as an individual actor but as part of a task-distributed operational system allows exploration, scientific research, and heritage conservation to be conducted with greater safety, reproducibility, and accountability