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..

Sergio Viegas, director of DAN Brasil, speaks to lobster divers.

I’m in the northeastern Brazilian city of Natal to better understand what drives men to sacrifice their health and their lives in pursuit of lobster. We’ve seen this same situation played out in Honduras and Mexico as well—it happens all over the world.
They dive using extremely poor and rigged equipment, to depths well beyond safe or acceptable limits, to catch lobster and spear fish. We met with a group of about 45 divers in a small fishing village north of here last week. Every man in the room said he had endured pain in his joints—typical signs of decompression sickness. A few walked with a limp and one man in the room used canes to get around. These were otherwise healthy men in their 30s and 40s. The lobster they catch is then mostly exported to the US.

The answers to “why” are pretty simple. It’s all they know. They don’t have the education to do much else. And the opportunities in their villages are few and far between. The answers to fixing this problem are a lot more complex vary by country, region and even village in some cases. If you simply ban lobster diving, you take away the only livelihood many of these men have available to them. That doesn’t help anyone. Mandating higher wages? Good start, but if the wages are paid by the pound it will just encourage them to dive more, not less. And it does nothing about their safety.

I know I am fortunate to have the opportunities to see and explore these places, and photograph the beauty. As a journalist—which is what I will always be in my mind—the important part is telling the story. That is my purpose for this project on Harvesting Divers and the purpose of this blog.

Our plans in the short term involve telling the story every chance we can get, in print, online and by live presentations. Next month, in Alert Diver magazine and on Alertdiver.com, there will be a much more complete version of this story, discussing the problems and the solutions. If you haven’t already read it, I would encourage you to read the profile National Geographic did on this project and our efforts last month. There is also a short video on the DAN YouTube channel. I’ll be giving two presentations on the topic at the DEMA Show in Las Vegas in November and plan to take it on the road next year as well.

We’re also working to shore up the medical treatment and care these divers receive, both in the cases of first aid or supporting the definitive care at hyperbaric chambers in these three countries. There is a lot of misunderstanding and missed opportunities that could help these men recover from their injuries. When we stopped into health clinic after health clinic in these small towns in Brazil, the medical staff only knew to give divers a pain reliever and send them home. They didn’t know anything about oxygen first aid or recompression.

In the longer term, we are planning to work with various nonprofit groups, governmental organizations and medical professionals to find a way to help these divers dive more safely while giving them other opportunities.

The important thing is to be aware. If you’re eating cheap lobster tail in a restaurant, the odds are good it was caught by men who used compressed air to find it and likely suffered injuries because of it..

All I can say is this was an amazing place. I am sure the indigenous peoples thought it was spiritual; like god’s building blocks tossed around. There is a constant wind that makes it seem like voices. In the rainy season, the area is green and water pools on the rocks, making reflecting pools. We also saw some cave paintings where ancient settlers recorded what they saw.

Stirring. Of course, there was also sign of man’s presence. Some genius decided it would be a good idea to draw a heart on the same cave wall, just a few inches away from the original paintings. There was also a small chapel built there, in memoriam of a man who died in a knife fight on the ground. But, still, the remoteness of the area, and the dirt roads have kept it relatively untouched. Even more surprising, though, was the unfettered access. In any other country in the world this would be a national park or a protected place. I hope they do find a way to protect it before man continues to intrude.

On the other hand, the road to Serra Verde was one of the funniest and strangest road trips I have ever taken. We took an afternoon off to visit the site and Patrick Muller was acting as our guide for the day. He had been to the site once before, but it had been a while, so as we were driving his wife Ana was on the phone conferring with friends who had been there.

Along the way, Patrick decided to take a “shortcut”. He wanted to swing through a small village to grab lunch. When got there, the “restaurant” looked pretty sketchy so he decided to move on. Instead of going back to the main road, he chose to follow the short cut to keep moving in the right direction. It ended up adding two hours to the trip. While it could have been frustrating, the absurdity of the situation and the places we drove through, coupled with the reactions of the people as we asked for directions, made it a priceless adventure. I kept thinking of Buzz Lightyear’s declaration that “flying is falling down…with style”. On this trip, a road trip was getting lost with humor. We all laughed and joked for the entire trip.

In one small community, where we finally had to turn back instead of trying to limp our way forward, called interestingly Palestine II, four different men came out of the house—all with pot bellies and none wearing shirts—to offer us directions. Well, that isn’t entirely true. The fourth came out and asked us if we wanted to come inside and have a drink with them. We opted against it.

Strangest sighting on this road trip, but you are just going to have to take my word for this, is a mummified cow. The air was hot and dry in the desert area on the way to Serra Verde. Obviously a cow died out in the desert. Its body seemed to be perfectly preserved though. Some joker set it up beside the road, upside down. It was resting on its horn tips and it’s rump with all four legs straight up in the air. Surreal.

On the way back to Natal, three different times we crossed a river with official road signs stating “Rio sem Nome”. Does naming a river ‘river without a name” mean that is the actual name? Should you give it one? Filed under the category of “things that make you go huh?”

See more pictures from Serra Verde here..

For the last week, Dr. Nochetto and I’ve been traveling to the fishing villages to meet with lobster divers from this region, the reason Matias and I are here in the first place. Harvesting divers exist around the world, although it seems to predominate in the tropics. One of the major harvests is the spiny lobster. They certainly collect other things, but lobster seems to be the primary money maker. The Brazilian divers dive similarly to the other two groups we have began to work with, but with a twist again—there is always local adaptation.

In Honduras, the divers dive off of industrial boats with 40 to 60 divers on board, in deplorable conditions, far from shore. In Isla Natividad, the divers work in teams of three, one boat captain, one line tender and one diver per boat. They still dive well beyond any acceptable or established limit, but they represent the more positive end of the spectrum. The divers here in Brazil dive with two divers on a boat, two line tenders and a boat captain. They only have a single compressor between them and only a small propane gas cylinder converted to a volume tank. If the compressor shuts down for any reason, their air supply is extremely limited. And this doesn’t account for completely inadequate filtration, hoses or other equipment. They work for a boat owner who takes half of the profits, but maintains the boat and the equipment. The crew splits the rest of the money—not sure if the divers take more than the tenders.

The problems: these divers are diving for 1 to 3 hours at depths in the 90 to 120 foot range and sometimes much deeper. They have little understanding of the signs and symptoms of decompression sickness and no medical support. While they aren’t diving as remotely as the Honduran divers, the local medical care has no idea how to handle an injured diver, not understanding oxygen first aid or the need for recompression therapy. The director of the public health program in Rio do Fogo told us yesterday that “thank God we’ve never had to use the oxygen.” They should be using oxygen all the time, and definitely any time a diver feels a problem. The only chamber in the area is operated by the Brazilian Navy. They will treat divers, but it doesn’t seem like they like to do it.

The secondary problem here is the overharvesting of the reefs. These men are cleaning out the ocean bottom of viable lobster. In some places, the divers take undersized lobster and females with eggs. The depletion of the resources, and this is true in all cases of Harvesting Divers, is causing them to dive deeper and deeper, putting themselves are greater risk.

An unusual twist to the lobster diving here in Brazil, it is against the law to hunt for fish with spear guns or collect lobster using compressed air. But, once the divers have collected the lobster and brought them to shore, it is not against the law to keep these lobster. The only way authorities can enforce the law is if they catch the divers in the water with fish and lobster in their hands. We’ve had several discussions about the creation system like is done with Brazilian wood to certify that the wood as harvested in a responsible legal manner. Any restaurant caught serving lobster that was caught using these unsafe and exploitative means would be fined.

Sergio Viegas, the director of DAN Brasil, is looking to establish a simplified training program here to educate the divers to better understand the signs and symptoms of decompression sickness. He also wants to educate the medical community on how to care for divers when they are injured. Whether the idea of fines for restaurants is the best approach or not, no one knows. What is certain, though, is that there are no simple answers and it will take involvement from many different groups to correct this problem—environmental organizations, the government, healthcare providers and DAN.

For more information, check the recent National Geographic highlight.

You can also see a collection of other images in this online folder..

Northeast Brazil, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, is by turns peaceful and hectic, dirty and lovely, crowded and wide open. Of course, this can be said about just about any city of course, if you know where to look. There are areas on the beaches where you feel like it is the end of the world and other times on the city streets in traffic where you don’t understand how they can fit one more car, motorcycle or street vendor into a space—until someone comes in and offers to clean your windshield or sell you a steering wheel cover while you are sitting at a stop light.

Dr. Matias Nochetto and I have come to Natal, Brazil to meet with and learn about a group of harvesting divers—more about that in the next blog. Part of understanding what drives these divers to dive as they do, though, involves understanding where they live. So, after 30 hours of travel time, we made it here in time to hit the ground running.

While Natal is a reasonable-sized city, packed with people and shopkeepers continually sweeping the streets in front of their stores to keep the wind-blown dust and dirt out of the inside, the villages are much simpler and quieter. While this is nice and idyllic, there doesn’t seem to be much to do in the villages either—farming and fishing are about it. Farming is limited to subsistence agriculture as the major crops in the country-side seems to be sugar cane.

In the suburbs and villages, it’s not unusual to see men riding horses or donkeys pulling carts. Not that they are everywhere, but it’s not as unusual as you might think. In the last 10 to 15 years, I was told, motorcycles have become cheap and readily available replacing the need for animal help. An unintended consequence of this is that villagers are simply turning their donkeys lose rather than keeping them and feeding them. Of course, the animals thrive on their own, but they are now wandering the streets and becoming road hazards..