The Dangerous (and Often Deadly) Scuba Diving Lifestyle of the Miskito People

I slide my arms into a homemade hose harness and enter the water. My regulator has the taste of motor oil, and my head hurts from the blazing sun and seasickness. It is the first dive of the day, and the compressor’s engine has not warmed up yet; I struggle for air from the hose connected to the boat as I fight to descend without a weight belt. Exhausted after fighting stiff current at 80 feet, I return to the boat and cap a 20-minute dive. My two Miskito dive partners are not afforded that luxury. They go on for four hours, diving again and again to make a living and support their families.

THE HARVEST

Cayo Bobel is nothing more than a rock emerging from the Caribbean Sea, 30 miles offshore from the jungle of La Mosquitia, one of the last untamed regions on Earth. More than 100 Miskito men have been living here for months, sleeping in close quarters on bunk beds and hammocks under a thatch roof. Every day they dive for sea cucumbers that will be exported to Asia where they are considered a delicacy.

At dawn, we embark on one of the 12 small wooden boats that constitute the divers’ fleet. The skipper sails to a larger vessel offshore. The Captain Jimmy is one of the 40 or so boats hunting for spiny lobster in Honduran waters. For 40 years now, the Miskito from Honduras and Nicaragua have been considered the best divers in Central America. Every year, more than 2,000 of them are recruited by Honduran fishing companies to harvest lobsters, sea cucumbers or conch destined for North American and Asian markets. During the 2014-15 season, Honduras exported $40 million worth of spiny lobsters, a quarter of which were harvested by scuba divers. Ninety-five percent of the catch was exported to the United States. In 2013, the country exported $200,000 worth of sea cucumbers, but the figure is likely higher now.

After decades of harvesting, the spiny lobster population has now significantly decreased and divers are often forced to dive deeper than 150 feet. As the lobsters began to disappear, the opportunity to harvest new species, such as the sea cucumber, began to emerge. Divers will typically earn between $200 and $350 for a two-week trip, only twice the minimum salary in Honduras, but good money in La Mosquitia, where the education level is low and the unemployment rate is high.

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After exchanging news and cigarettes with the Captain Jimmy’s sailors, I wait as our boat goes on with its route, looking for the perfect harvesting spot: a sandy bottom, 90 to 120 feet deep. The dive team is composed of two divers, Renaldo, 33, and Marvin, 35; one manguerista, Jose, 25, in charge of handling the air compressor; and the boat captain. There are two categories of harvesting divers: those on dive boats who use tanks, and those from the island who use onboard air compressors with two 180-foot-long hoses. We fall into the latter category. Teamwork is of crucial importance: The manguerista has to make sure the compressor works fine and adjust it to the diver’s depth, while the captain must follow the bubbles.

I slide my arms into a homemade hose harness and enter the water with Marvin. The experienced diver swiftly descends to the bottom. Despite a rough draw from our regulators and a lack of weight belts, we reach the bottom at about 80 feet and station ourselves 4 feet above the sand, looking for signs of sea cucumbers. Marvin quickly identifies his prey in the sand and plunges his long iron rod to catch it with a hook. The bottom current is strong, and I find myself exhausted after a short 20-minute dive. Marvin and Renaldo will go on for more than four hours, ascending to empty their 65-pound net bags or to shout at the manguerista to give them more air when they need to go deeper. They carry no depth gauge or bottom timer, and rarely ever stop while ascending. At the end of the day, Renaldo feels pain and scratches the skin under his left arm. These are the first signs of decompression sickness — just the usual routine for these men. Since 2003, more than 350 divers have died from a decompression accident, according to the Association of Handicapped Miskito Lobster Divers. In 2014, 11 deaths were recorded, not including the men buried at sea.

THE CHAMBER

Back in Puerto Lempira, the capital of Gracias a Dios, the only recompression chamber of the region always seems to be full. Wilfredo Martinez, the smiley and dedicated hyperbaric physician, introduces us to Freddy Firmin, a 25-year-old injured diver. After seven days of diving around 80 feet, he ascended, unable to move his legs. His comrades took him back underwater, hoping it would reduce the size of the bubbles trapped in his spinal cord. When this didn’t work, they attempted to ward off the bad spell by using traditional herbs — some divers believe decompression sickness is in fact a curse of the Liwa Mairin, a siren in Miskito mythology and protector of marine life who punishes divers for overharvesting marine life. In the end, it took Firmin four days to reach the hospital, as the boat captain decided to finish the harvesting campaign first. “Patients rarely reach us before 48 hours,” says Martinez. In 2014, 50 divers were left handicapped, while an estimated 3,000 live in the region, according to the international aid charity GOAL.

Over the course of five days, Firmin will artificially dive to 60 feet before slowly being brought back to the surface while breathing oxygen. He knows the drill: It’s his second visit to the chamber in six years. A few days later, he leaves the hospital on his two legs, and chances are he will dive again.

In a nearby room, other crippled divers are busy training their leg muscles to recover their motor skills. Arias Graham Patricio, 38, lies vertically, strapped on a medical bed. After 18 years of diving, Patricio finally had a stroke of bad luck at 50 feet. He exited the water, unable to move the right half of his body. He went unconscious, but fortunately he was brought back to the mainland quickly by a small motorboat. He underwent three days of hyperbaric treatment and is now starting the slow, painful recovery process to walk again. His guide along this path is Teofilo Bence, a round-faced Miskito left crippled by a diving accident in 1993. He learned physiotherapy as he was himself being treated by an American physiotherapist and now acts as the de facto healer of the divers. “I treated 30 divers in 2014, and they all walk!” he says, proudly. Sure enough, Patricio walks again, albeit very slowly, a few weeks later. Being paraplegic in La Mosquitia is more or less the equivalent of a slow death sentence. Unable to work, fish or take care of the fields, the men often die of sore infections and rely heavily on family support.

THE FUTURE

The boat owners, who are ultimately responsible for the diving conditions, very rarely assume any responsibility, and at best will give an affected family a few hundred dollars as compensation. As for the treatment, only a third of the owners agree to pay the $1,000 to use the hyperbaric chamber. Martinez has to organize fundraisers to be able to fill his oxygen tanks.

Every year starts with rumors of a permanent ban on diving but, in the end, they never seem to come to fruition. A law to offer divers better protection was passed in 2010 but has been reported only about 30 times, explains a local NGO worker. What the Miskito need is the money, and the authorities have other fish to catch. In 2015, Honduras was considered the third-most violent country on the planet — for a nation not at war that is — and in 2012, according to a United Nations report, 86 percent of drug flights from South America landed first in La Mosquitia before continuing their journeys north.

In March 2015, five of the biggest sea-product companies from the U.S., including Chicken of the Sea and Red Lobster, signed a pledge to not purchase any lobster harvested by divers. But the promise is difficult to keep, according to those in the industry who say no one is able to track the products before they reach the factory in Honduras. According to Seth Paisano Wood, MP for the department of Gracias a Dios, Honduras, the already precarious economy of the region would completely collapse if diving were to stop. The future lies in economic alternatives, believes Bernard McCaul, GOAL’s country director.

For the past five years, the NGO has based its programs on the natural skills and traditions of the Miskito for fishing. Until now, drying and salting was the only way to sell fish outside La Mosquitia, but new ice factories could ultimately help the fishermen sell their fresh catch within the country. New and simple techniques could also help locals focus on less-dangerous forms of fishing, including shrimp and jellyfish, another delicacy in Asia.

In 2010, Divers Alert Network reviewed the Miskito’s diving techniques and promoted ways to increase their safety, such as training in oxygen first aid. DAN is looking into ways to improve care for the Miskito in the future.

“The world was horrified when we realized how many dolphins we were killing because of our hunger for tuna, but very few people know how many human lives have been lost and families devastated because of our hunger for lobster,” says Dr. Matías Nochetto, director of medical programs at DAN. “There are two potentially endangered species here — not just Panulirus argus but also Homo sapiens (var. Miskito).”

For more photos and info on the Miskito, visit focuszero.com/liwa-mairin. To donate or learn more about GOAL’s work in Honduras, visit goalglobal.org/countries/honduras.