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Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Lobster Symposium

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More than 150 people attended the opening presentation of the “Symposium of Spiny Lobster” that began today in La Ceiba, Honduras. The meeting is all about the sustainability of the lobster harvest, throughout the Caribbean, with a focus on lobster here in Honduras. And it just so happens I’m on the agenda, too!
Ok, I knew I was coming down to lecture and provide training for the boat captains who take the harvesting divers out to the dive sites. I just didn’t know it was this big of a deal. Pretty impressive, all together. And that opening presentation had some really interesting statistics on the state of lobster harvests as well. I have asked for a copy of it so I can reference it later–after it is translated of course.

After that opening, though, the wheels came off a bit. Last week, I sent a shipment of equipment and materials to use in the training this week so it would be here in time for me to use. And it arrived in San Pedro Sula last Thursday. And that is as far as it got. For some reason it got hung up in customs.

At first they needed additional information from Dr. Mejia. And that delay tripped it up. On Monday the Customs computer system was down. FedEx finally retrieved the box yesterday. When they confirmed it to us this morning, but said it might take a day or two more to get it out to us Dr. Mejia and I jumped in the car and drove three hours up the road to pick it up. That’s one way.

The organizers of the event were very understanding, and actually somewhat apologetic since they knew it was their own governmental system that caused the delay and not us. We’ve rescheduled the four groups of boat captains into three and will get all the training done beginning tomorrow. Just the way it goes. We begin at 8:30 in the morning teaching oxygen first aid. I’ve honestly taught this DAN program to more than 500 students and in a couple different languages (through interpreters) but I am really looking forward to these programs the next few days. I can’t think of a place it has ever been more needed or a single class that I think could have a better chance of directly improving the life and health of a human being. That is pretty cool.

The picture above is of the opening presentation. But more important to me is the fact that the men sitting at that table are the divers themselves. I met a couple of them last year when I was in Puerto Lempira. At the time, they commented that people had come to meet with them before. Those people took pictures, made promises and then nothing happened. It has been slow in coming, and this is a first step, but I hope they see that we are trying to do something to improve their lives.

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Full Circle

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The sights, sounds and smells of a place like this come back quickly when you step outside. The semi-controlled chaos on the streets, the brush fires set to clear away growth from the fields, the odd combinations of English and Spanish on the road signs and streets. The heat and the ever-present humidity. But there is also optimism and an energy that is hard to beat.
It was a little more than a year ago when Dr. Matias Nochetto and I joined Dr. Elmer Mejia in La Ceiba, Honduras to see what we could do to help out the hyperbaric chamber here and, in turn, help out the Miskito Indians who harvest lobster.

On that visit, we learned how dire the situation was: more than 2000 men were disabled because of diving, and hundreds more joined them every year. And those were the men who lived through their injuries. Many others didn’t.

Now I’m back in La Ceiba. Dr. Mejia invited me down to help him put on three days of training in Oxygen First Aid and additional measures for the boat captains and owners. These are the men who care for (and are responsible for) the divers. This problem isn’t new and there isn’t an easy solution. If you shut down the diving—like has been proposed and the government has attempted to do—the men have no way to make a living and no way to support their families. Their only other option is smuggling drugs. But if something isn’t done, more men will die.

This scheduled training is a great first step. The boat owners realize they have to do something. They have to be more responsible. And they have to take better care of their divers. If they don’t , the government is prepared to shut them down for good. And then everyone loses.

So, I was thrilled to hear from Dr. Mejia when I arrived that he had been invited to speak to the Honduran National Congress in Tegucigalpa today and give his recommendations on how the divers can reduce their risk and how we can improve their care. That is a tremendous first step and a great recognition of the work Dr. Mejia has done. He has not been alone in this. Many others have pursued this project over the years. Groups have conducted training for the divers, lobbied the government and provided health care opportunities. The changes we are seeing (I say very hopefully) are the culmination of many different people working for many years to improve things for these men who harvest the sea.

The next few days should be interesting as we are going to attend a symposium tomorrow where various groups will be taking up these exact same questions. And then the training begins the next day. It should be an interesting week.
Hopefully this won’t just be a circle, but an upward spiral.

For more background:

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Milestones and projects

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“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

Over the weekend, I passed the 10,000 photograph milestone on my current camera body–not in general. I wouldn’t even begin to guess when I passed that milestone as a photographer, but I am sure it was sometime in the early 90s. And, ironically (or appropriately) the 10,000th photograph on this camera wasn’t taken in some far flung location, but rather in my hometown. It was of a friend’s daughter at the local ice rink playing with my own daughters.

And while numbers are simply numbers, it made me think about photographs taken and lives touched by them. An image may be technically perfect and still leave viewers flat. Other times an image with technical flaws (backlight, exposure, composition) can touch people in ways you never expected.

The last two months I’ve been staying fairly close to home to complete a certificate program at the Center for Documentary Studies at DukeUniversity. I began the program several years ago, but then life and travel got in the way of completing it. In a way, though, it seems as if the delay worked out for the best. I am in a much better place in my life and career now and much more able to put together a final project of the level necessary for completion of the program.

The most important and significant portions of this certificate program for me have been the things I have learned from my peers (see Conversations with Peers). In these last two programs, my “style” wasn’t even remotely similar to any of my classmates. We all worked in different genres and used different techniques. Alternately, their work left me flat or blew me away. Sometimes those reactions changed week to week. But every class I learned something from them and realized things about their images and stories that touched me and moved me.

Tomorrow, I will present a multimedia documentary presentation of the Harvesting Diver project, called “For Cheap Lobster”, showing the devastating affect that diving has on these groups of men who harvest the sea. Thiswill be final presentation as part of the CDS Certificate program and where Iwill receive my Certificate in the Documentary Arts.

Probably one of the most interesting things about this project for me, in the context of CDS, has been the reactions my classmates have had to the images. They have wanted to know more about what was going on, even though not a single person in either class was a diver. They wanted to know if there was anything they could do or what steps we were taking to help the divers out.

And ultimately, that is the power of the photograph. To tell a story. To make a connection. To make the abstract real. It is possible as a writer to tell a story and elicit that visceral reaction from a reader. It can be done, but it’s difficult. The reader has to pay attention and focus on what you’re writing.

Photography has the amazing ability to connect the viewer to the subject in seconds. The reaction is usually immediate and profound. That is the power of photography. The words tell the story and explain what is happening in the image, but the image itself has the power to touch the viewer on a deeper, more personal level.

Now that this phase of the project is done and the certificate program is complete, it’s time to get back out on the road. Time to make more images and tell more stories..

Conversations with peers

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It’s exceedingly rare to have conversations with our “peers”. We talk to others all the time; about the weather, what you had for lunch and the ballgame the night before. But to really talk to people about higher matters is rare. Ok, it’s rare for me. Maybe I’m out of the ordinary, but I doubt it.


That “need” if you will or maybe “lack” is one of the myriad reasons I entered the Certificate program at the Center for Documentary Studies(CDS) at Duke University. This is an amazing facility that focuses on teaching people to make documentaries—they can be audio, video or still photography. Or combinations of all of the above. And it’s not journalists or people with a background in video; its regular people who have a story to tell, or a desire to tell stories, and want to tell them.

To finish up the certificate, I had to complete two classes this semester. One is the Final Project Seminar where we all bring in our nearly finished final projects and work together, critique and support each other and put together final versions of our projects for presentation at the graduation. The other class was the past weekend: a four day intensive Advanced Photography Workshop.  

In both of these classes the instructors are/were tremendous; tops in their fields and professions. But I have been even more impressed by the quality of the other students in the program. It’s really exciting to sit and talk about photographic techniques, of course. But even more interesting and rewarding to talk about the why stuff. Why did you choose this angle? Why did you show this subject this way? Why did you choose to tell this story? As things are coming to an end in this program for me (although something tells me I will continue to be involved with the center), I realize that connection to my peers is the most important thing. I guess you could say it is one of the purposes for the adventure.

I enjoy telling stories with words, photographs and videos. Sometimes I have the happy opportunity to combine my day job with my hobby and other times the two are totally unrelated. But that need to connect with others while making a story, and to connect with others after the field work is done and seeking their help to refine it, is just as important.

If you’re in the Durham area on Friday evening, May 20th, 2011, plan to attend the Center for Documentary Studies Graduation andPresentations at the Nasher Museum. Reception begins at 6 pm and the presentations begin at 7 pm.

I am sure one or two of them will open your eyes.  And maybe inspire you to start a conversation with a peer….

Part 1 — Telling the story

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Harvesting divers in Zanzibar, 2006

The first group of harvesting divers I met was in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 2006. These men harvested sea cucumbers for export to Asia and were excited to learn about the hyperbaric chamber we were there to train the local divers to operate. I understand since its installation most of the people who have been treated in that chamber are those same cucumber divers.

In January, we got word about a new chamber that Dr. Elmer Mejia had opened in La Ceiba, Honduras. He was treating Miskito Indians injured while harvesting lobster. Everything fell into place and Dr. Matias Nochetto and I were on our way there in February. Since then things have snowballed with connections to two other groups of divers in different parts of the world. These other dive communities essentially do the same thing, but use slightly different techniques and with more or less organization. And more is still to come.

I remember in school the stories from the early part of the 20th century about the exploitation of workers and the hazardous working conditions. I fully realize that these conditions still exist in many different parts of the world in sweatshops and mills. I also realize that I can’t right all the wrongs or stop all the injustices. The situation of harvesting divers hits home a bit more for me, though. As a diver and a person who makes a living working for dive safety, it is troubling to see men be disabled or killed doing exact thing that I do for fun and call a sport. And worst of all, we know what is causing the injuries these men receive, we know how to treat it when they are hurt and we have a pretty good idea how to avoid it, too—or at least reduce the risk significantly.

My journey this year has been eye-opening, exciting, frustrating, frightening and amusing. It has taken me to Honduras, Mexico and Brazil. In the process I’ve met some amazing and inspiring people. They are working day in and day out, enduring difficult circumstances to make the lives of harvesting divers better, safer and healthier. Now it’s my turn. There is a two part article, talking about the situation in two different locations, now online at AlertDiver.com. There is also a photographic slide show of 18 images. I look forward to your comments after reading the articles and seeing the images.

Simply go to AlertDiver.com. Click on the Features link and find the Harvesting Divers article. That main article will lead you to a sidebar and a photo essay of 18 images.
Below are two links to other parts of this project.
• Using still images and video segments I shot along the way, we created a video you can watch on Youtube– DAN Video Guy page:

• National Geographic took an interest in this project and featured it in the Nat Geo News Watch:

From here, I will continue to tell this story with live presentations and other publications. Next week in Las Vegas at the DEMA Show I will be giving two presentations on the situation and plan to take that talk on the road next year.

But, also, it is time now to move onto Part 2 – working with these divers to improve their lives..

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