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| 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..