Saul Ronaldo Atiliano plunges into the blue-green water. He makes his living diving for Caribbean lobsters. He has done this for 25 years. Down, down he dives. He works to grab a spiny, olive-brown lobster. Then up, up he swims, over and over.
But this time something is wrong. Suddenly, Mr. Atiliano feels intense pressure. He has never felt it before. But he knows what it is: decompression sickness. The same problem has killed or disabled many of his friends.
“The pressure attacked me deep in the water,” says Mr. Atiliano. The 45-year-old is a native of the Mosquitia region, one of the poorest areas in Honduras. Thousands of residents there, called “Miskitos,” depend on lobster fishing to make a living. A Miskito diver makes about $3 per pound of lobster and 28 cents for a sea cucumber. (Sea cucumbers are brainless, wormlike bottom-crawlers. They eat off the seafloor and people in China and Korea love their strong flavor.) Divers make better money than many people in Mosquitia. And many, like Mr. Atiliano, suffer for it. Since 1980, at least 1,300 Miskitos have been disabled with decompression sickness. The sickness is also known as DCS or “the bends.”
Did you know air is pushing on you every day? When people stand on dry land, the air around them has pressure—just the right amount for a person to live in. But water is heavier than air. When divers go deep and breathe from tanks, they are breathing air with a lot of extra pressure in it. If a diver comes to the surface fast, the pressure releases fast, kind of like bubbles in a can of soda. Nitrogen bubbles from the air go into the diver’s body. Those bubbles don’t belong in the human body. They can harm tissue or stop blood vessels from doing their jobs.
Sometimes the bends paralyze. Sometimes they kill. One day a diver might not be affected at all. Another day, the bends could be severe.
To dive safely, divers must come to the surface of the water slowly. That helps get nitrogen out of the body. It also helps if divers take long breaks between dives. But that’s hard when you dive to survive!
