|
I hesitated, feeling that I was being led into a tomb. I was about to face my nightmare, the fear of every deep sea diver. Dr. Norvelle Goff motioned me into a cinder block shed beneath the jungle clinic. I resolved to show no emotion, though I was feeling a whole body revulsion.
An emaciated man was collapsed on a cot in the thin gray light. Another man struggled on a parallel bar apparatus, dragging his dead legs behind him. Dr. Goff told the men that I was an American "journalista", as well as a fellow deep sea diver, who had come to interview them about their accidents in order to help other divers in the Honduran lobster industry. Would they mind being interviewed and photographed? Each man smiled bravely and said that he'd help.
The doctor gave her clinical descriptions of each man's paralysis, well used crutches hanging on the wall behind her. She turned and spoke to the man on the handwalk in a Miskito Indian dialect. His name was Reginaldo Garcia.
He said he'd become paralyzed after a dive to 25 brazos (or 150 feet). Upon surfacing, he'd had pain in his back, and shouted four his dogout canoe tendder to come to his aid. He had struggled into the canoe and then lost all feeling and movement in his legs. The tender paddled him back to the mother ship, a steel hull shrimp boat, where crewmen dragged him aboard. He laid on the decks of two different ships for five days before reaching the recompression chamber on Roatan, where he received oxygen recompression treatment from the Episcopalian medical mission at Anthony's Key Resort.
This diver's paralysis was caused by the "bends", a condition resulting from exceptional exposure to depth. If a diver stays underwater too long, his body tissues absorb more nitrogen from his beathing air than can be released upon ascent, without traumatic bubble formation. The enlarged bubbles then clog is capillary system, impeding the flow of oxygen rich blood to vital tissues, causing tissue death: in many cases, nerve tissue death.
The only treatment for the bends involves recompression. Typically, the victim will enter a pressure chamber and be recompressed to an equivalent depth of 60 feet of sea water to shrink the size of the air bubbles in their system. They breathe pure oxygen to purge themselves from the excess nitrogen.
Regrettably, the treatment came too late for this diver. Recompression therapy is most effective if administered within minuste of a decompression injury. The paralysis of this main was permanent. There are many hundreds, if not thousands of divers paralyzed in Moskitia. There are 900 recorded paralysis cases, but many others go undocumented due to rudimentary communications in the region.
That region is known as "The Mosquito Coast", a name given to the tribal territories that straddle the Honduran and Nicaraguan boarder and touch the Caribbean Sea. It is a modern name for an ancient land, a steaming jungle marsh that received it's forbidding name from some long-forgotten navigator. He saw fit to warn his fellow marines away from its malarial swamps; his message in its name. Today, the Honduran segment of Moskitia is encompassed by the province known as "Gracia a Dios," or "Thanks be to God".
The coastal marshlands are spider webbed by rivers that recede into low lying rain forests and then snake up into fog whiskered mountains. To this landscape we add the Miskito Indian tribal peoples and a very few outsiders. Mix these players with their driving forces: Superstition, Hunger, Ignorance, Desperation, Third World Politics, Faith and Hope and there lies the skeleton of this tale, demanding from me its voice to speak to you with purpose.
The root of my story reaches back to Sabine Pass, Texas, in the summer of '85. After supervising the load out of a ship for a three or four week commercial diving operation, I met a trim built man in his 50's. He had the cracked leather face of a green sea windshiman; sparked by iceberg eyes. He claimed ownership of a 120 foot workboat tied up at the dock, astern of us, ripples of heat rising from it. It was decorated with yellow tape; the words, "US FEDERAL MARSHAL" imprinted on it. The ship owner cursed something about how his captain, "the rotten bastard", had been caught smuggling drugs.
He knew nothing of that low-minded activity, of course. He was suffering grave injustices at the ahands of the federal authorities; his ship having been seized, his freedom being in doubt.
I didn't care for the flavor of his hardluck story and heeled leeward to drift toward some shade and a cool glass, glad that I was ever free from the ensnaring troubles of a smuggler's life.
Turning, I saw a coal black man leap the 10 or 12 feet from the bow of the impounded ship into the water. He swam and cooled himself, then lay hold of a three quarter inch line that hung from the bow bit. Hand over wet hand, he climbed that rope, grabbed the gunnel and swung aboard.
I was impresed with the main's hand and upper body strength, though I acted cool. Frankly, I couldn't have made that climb with sea afire and gaff in my lip. "Who's that?" I asked the ship's owner.
"One of my lobster divers," cam the satisfied reply. "You can buy one for five or ten bucks a day."
This guy was bad, but he certainly had gotten my attention. He said that he owned an island off Belize and fished lobster in those waters.
"My Indians can dive all day at 70 to 120 feet," he boasted, then laughted. "They'll last a couple weeks and then start bitching about pains and a little paralysis. I fire them when we hit the beach and buy a few more. There's hundreds of them leaping for the job. The trick is to keep them from breaking your compressor when they get grumpy after awhile at sea. The little bastards will throw parts overboard when they want to go in."
I tired reasoning with him to try to make him understand that if he ran a proper dive station with a recompression chamber aboard, he wouldn't have to be retaining his crews all the time. His men could be helathy and want to stay aboard for work. They wouldn't be sabataging his gear and he could have an efficient, profitable team of divers. I didn't even try to broach morality with him. It would be a waste of time, but I thought that he might recognize his own economic self-interests.
He chuckled at his perception of my naivete'. "A chamber costs $15,000 to $20,000. It'd take a long time at five bucks a day to touch that," he said. "Dime a dozen, these pukes. Why waste money on 'em?"
This man, not ignorant of diving procedures, was without excuse for his actions. He had rotted his soul. I spat tobacco on the ground at his feet, looked him in the eye, smiled and left. I'd found my cosmic enemy; not the man, but hus ruling spirits: Greed and a slaver's prejudice.
Eight years later, I was think about him as I made preparations to investigate reports of similar diving atrocities, on a massive scale, off the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. This time, I could do something about it; I had a magazine.
The reports I'd heard were factually anchored by Dr. Tom Millington, Medical Director of the Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine Department at St. John's Pleasant Valley Hospital, Camarillo, CA. The good doctor backed up and elaborated upon the unbelievable scope of Type II Decompression Sickness ravaging the Honduran fishing banks.
Tucking away a short list of names and towns, supplied to me by Dr. Millington, I started to pack my expedition gear along with my "home schooled" 14-year-old son, Jesse, who was coming along for some third world education; which started with packing. I threw half the contents out of his bag (hairbrushes, cologne, shampoo, etc.) and started over. Jungle boots, 100% deet insect repellant, poncho, one short and one long set of clothes, compass, knives, water purification tablets, first aid kit, camera, video gear, butterfly stitching tape, antibotic cream, canteen, mosquito net, space blanket, snake bite kit, 100 feet of one-eighth inch nylon parachute rope, toothbrushes, and little else. We had started taking Chloroquine (Malaria) tablets two weeks prior to our flight. In Honduras, we would buy Penicillin, in case of sickness or wounding. If a bush plane goes down in Mosquitia, it's an instant survival expedition.
We dropped out of the thunderstorm in a plane built during the Bogart era and saw beneath us an endless marshland...Mosquitia, painted with every shade of green and brown. Thick vegetation clng to the bankds of the larger rivers which interlinked shimmering lakes. Grass-roofed huts stood on stilts at their shorelines. Lone dugout canoes were poled along by tiny brown men and small heards of cattle spotted the marsh grass. This was "high adventure with no referees" and I felt great.
We landed on the dirt runway of Puerto Lempira, and asked directions to Mopawi, a "peace corps" type organization dedicated to the education of the Miskito Indian people
The town is the unofficial capital of Moskitia and is home to about 1,000 people. It is on a bayou about 40 miles from Nicaragua, 10 miles from the Caribbean and 150 miles from the nearest donkey trail into the main of Honduras.
A light sea breeze carried the organic smell of Caribbean life to me, highly season with woodsmoke and tortillas. Chickens, pigs, cows and laughing children were everywhere among the palm frond roofed huts of the town. Whole families, babies through grandparents, lived together, as evidenced by the local "porch life". I saw a young man with emaciated legs, lying on a porch mat with his family tending to him, they acted defensively when I raised my camera...I left them in peace.
As we neared the Mopawi Educational Center, the rising cries of seagulls were followed by the tidal smells of aquatic life. The Mopawi compund was on the waterfront and there I found Paul Stevens, an English social worker who's name was on the list thankfully supplied to me by Dr. Millington.
After settling down, Paul Stevens briefed us on lobster diving. "The Miskito diver knows nothing of diving physics. He only knows that the more lobster he catches, the more he's paid. Sometimes they dive with bleeding ears, due to the water pressure. That is considered 'macho'. When they get bent, most think that it is caused by mermaids. They dive without pressure or depth gauges and without watches. Many die offshore and are never recovered. Drug use on the boats is common. The money they earn is five or six times what a laborer earns. They're literally dying to dive. One hundred per cent of the divers are always bent and show central nervous system impairment. Often the divers support whole family trees. There is very little other work in Moskitia."
The lobster boats are typically 40 to 90 feet long and they'll anchor off the coastal towns and sound their horns, calling the men to sea.
Paul Stevens summed it up. "Thirty to fifty men paddle dugout canoes through the surf to meet each mother ship and board her. THen it's a 60 to 300 mile trip to the fishing bankds, spent on deck or sleeping on pallets packed into the ship's hold. The men are divided equally as divers or cyuca (canoe) tenders. The injured divers or boys (typically aged 14-17 years old) paddle the 15 foot long fiberglass cayucas carring one diver and his scuba tanks. The mother ship will anchor on a reef structure in a depth known only to the Captain, and the teams will leave in the cuyucas at dawn, seperate and hunt the lobster. The men will dive, tank after tank, until lunchtime...eat, grab more tanks and go back to diving for the rest of the day. Each man consumes eight to 20 tanks of air each day at depths of 80 to 160 feet. Two or perhaps three tanks a day would be close to the U.S. Navy diving tables limit. The diving done in the lobster industry is suicidal...if the men were aware of the risks; criminal, since they're kept ignorant by captains and boat owners who do know. During the day, all divers will experience joint pain and other symptoms of damage from the bends. Some are paralyzed right away, most work on in pain through the 12 to 15 day excursion; all are sick beyond their knowledge. They make $200 to $300 (US) per voyage. The average laborer's day rate is $3.00.
Paul Stevens continued, "In the last three months, since the government lifted its lobster fishery moratorium, we've been able to document 10 diving fatalities among the Miskito divers of the Gracias a Dios Province. There may well be more. It's difficult to tell with only word of mouth communications. This is a huge area with a population of 45,000 - at least 4,000 of those people are lobster divers."
Lesser incidents, like paralysis, had not been calculated yet, though it was sure that recent 'incidents' far outnumbered fatalitites. Paul said that there are a lot of paralyzed divers lying out in the bush, just waiting to die.
To realize the impact of this industry here, calculate that we have 22,000 males, one-half of them are either too young or too old to be divers. Of the remaining 11,000, at least three-quarters are divers or disabled divers. This is not only a vital industry; it is the ONLY industry. Without it, the economy stops, causing all manner of hardship and leading to starvation.
The next morning, Jesse and I caught a single engine bush plane to the Clinica Evangelica Moraza in Ahuas. Home of Dr. Benno Marx and the only recompression chamber in La Moskitia.
We had prayer and breakfast with Dr. Marx, his sweet wife and four well-mannered children. After talk with coffee, I went on rounds with the doctor, toured the clinic, the operating room and saw the "Vickers" 2.8 atmosphere monoplace chamber. We met up with Dr. Norvelle Goff and Dr. Marx left me in her care. She asked if I'd care to visit the two paralyzed divers in physical therapy. I tensed and said, "That's why I'm here."
After meeting with the two paralyzed divers and hearing the story of Reginald Gracia's deompression accident, I asked Garcia, "Why it had taken him five days to reach the recompression chamber on Roatan?" It was because the captain wouldn't leave the fishing banks. After about two days, he was tranferred to another ship that was heading for Roatan; then two more days sailing time.
There'd been 30 working divers and 30 cayuca tenders, plus the ships crew. It would be very expensive to stop work and transport a sick man to a chamber. Sometimes the divers would strike to force a captain to seek medical aid for one of their divers. He had, himself, stood up to different captains during his 13 years as a diver, demanding and winning medical aid for other men. Now that it was his turn to be the victim, he saw that the other divers feared the captain and none would stand for him...their fallen brother. He stopped with an ironic laugh that couldn't hide the wetness in his eyes and stared past me into empty space. I wanted that picture to tell his sotry, but I turned aside, out of respect for the man. Words will have to do.
Someday, he might get around with a walker, if he lives so long. Urinary catherization in unsanitary, third world conditions, can be expected to lead to repetitive kidney infections. This problem is one of many that can become fatal in Moskitia.
The man on the cot was in much worse shape. He looked like a starved coyote, slurring his words like a drunk with confusion clouding his eyes. He had organic brain damage, total paralysis from the chest down with absolutely no feeling below his heart. He had shown no response to any chamber therapy.
His is Eliceo Alvearnez and he had been a diver for 12 years. Elicea said that he had been diving in 35 brazos (210 fsw) when he became paralyzed. The details weren't clear, but his ship had abandoned him on the coast and he'd spent five days crawling through the brush in search of a Brujo (or witch) to cure him. He found her and was treated with herbs and potions, to no avail. Though the Brujos may be skilled in some treatments, this was a new disease. Type II central nervous system bends was caused by a demon she couldn't exorcise. In desperation, she made a poltice of gasoline and toilet paper, packed it on the base of his spine and set it afire in an effort to "jump start" his legs. It didn't work and the resulting ulcerous burn wasn't healing. Four days later, or a total of nine days after his accide, he flew into the clinic for a chamber treatment that produced no beneficial results.
It was a moot point that Benno's chamber only can descend to 60 feet of pressure and that the man probably needed treatment at 220 feet on the Royal Navy tables. Treatment should take place within a few minutes of the onset of the bends in order to resolve the problems; even so, it's not always successful. Treatments administered days or weeks later have very little hope of accomplishing much at all. In Eliceo's case, nada is all he got...nothing is what he has...no future except a slow death. In fact, his burn may kill if it continues not to heal.
When I got out of there, I wandered around for a while to give it all time to sink in. Cruel times and bitter problems!
Frustrating too, because we have answers to most of these diving problems; solution that are not only feasible but economically desirable!
If oxygen were available on every boat, injured divers could be treated "on site". They could hang off underwater at the end of a 30 foot hose and breath oxygen through it, purging their systems from the bends. This may not be the best treament in a perfect world, but it is a workable stop-gap solution for the third wold. No longer would hatred and fear rule the divers and the boat crews. No longer would productive workers be continually lost to the fleet, to society and to their families. No longer would everyone be helpless to assist their wounded comrades. (The only treament now is to soak the victim in used diesel fuel.) No longer would captains be forced to choose between continuing work or halting production for days and traveling a few hundred miles to reach medical treatment; no small expense. Not only that, but, when the boat reaches port, all the divers traditionally jump ship so that they can sit under a palm tree until their money's gone.
The fact is that oxygen supplies on board would save the fleet money and enhance the productivity of their diving crews, setting aside the deep moral implications of not having oxygen avaialbe. The problem is that no one has cared enough about these "Indians" to bother themselves with safety considerations. The irony is that everyone would benefit from this simple change in operations.
There is too much suffering in this world caused by greed and explitation for profit, to have to put up with brutal injuries that result from callous ignorance and end in economic loss.
I interviewed Dr. Benno Marx after his work that day. Up until 1991, when he received a donated chamber through the work of Dr. Tom Millington, he had treated paralyzed divers with hydration, steroids, and oxygen, with frustrating results. He sees the number of bends victims growing exponentially as the shallow waters have been depleted of lobster and the divers are foced to hunt even deeper, now to depths of over 160 feet. He's treated about 100 cases of diver paralysis since he set up the chamber and has seen fair success with partial recoveries, considering that the average time to treament is five days and that oxygen supplies have to be rationed. The doctor has been overwhelmed at times, with the chamber running 24 hours per day while half a dozen paralyzed divers awaited their turn. Following a period of "no diving" in the summer of 1993, over a six week period Dr. Marx treated an average of six divers per week and heard that an equal or greater number of men were being treated by the Episcopalian Ministry on Roatan. After the men have been diving steadily for some time, the case load slow down somewhat, perhaps due to the little understood phenomena of "acclimation", whereby divers seen to get used to pressure changes; but scientific studies haven't been done.
Dr. Marx receives all the funding for his outpost clinic from the Moravian Church. He says that some groups have ventured down to talk with him about support of the clinic, which was started by his father, Dr. Sam Marx, in the 1930's, but aside from the chamber donation, nothing has ever materialized.
After I interviewed Dr. Marx, I realized something interesting that he had hidden from me. The old 2.8 Vickers chamber was really a 2 atmosphere chamber, rated to be used at 33 feet of pressure. The good doctor was using that yellowed acrylic chamber to treat divers at twice its working depth (60 feet) because he knew that he attained better results with the deeper table, even though he risks his life with every treatment. The paralyzed patients know they have nothing much to lose.
You can go to any village and find a paralyzed, impotent diver, fatherless children, and diver's widows who have turned to prostitution to feed their families. All this...from an honest job.
Maritime history is rife with extraordinary labor abuses, from slave galleys through maroonings, cruelties hidden from the sight of landsmen; but, none ever worse than those taking place today. This is the Moral Armageddon of the diving world; and now I will reveal its brutal history.
After the '72 oil embargo, wooden shrimp boats that packed production ice were replaced by steel freezer boats, enabling the Bay Island shrimping flett to travel farther and remain at sea longer. Lobster trapping gradually became an alternative to shrimping during the less productive months of the year. It was more fuel efficient than dragging nets for a smaller catch.
Fuel prices were rising and lobster trappers soon realized that they could cover a large area of reefs while at anchor by employing divers who could work from "cayucas". The dievers could fish the reefs more thoroughly, faster and at less expense than the trap boats. The lobster diving industry was born.
The prime motivator in starting this industry appears to be the Red Lobster restaurant chain. Dick Monroe, head of Red Lobster Public Relations, told me that in the early and mid '70's, Red Lobster gave Albert Jackson (of Roatan) "more help than was usual" in setting up the first lobster processing plant in Oak Ridge on the Eastern Roatan Coast. So much help that I'm told Red Lobster held exclusive lobster buying rights from suppliers for five years after the plant went online and remains to this day, the largest single buyer of Honduran lobster at an estimated 25% of the total catch. That's a lot of lobster, especially since the Bay Island lobster fleet is easily the largest in the world.
From the beginning, indigenous Indians from the Miskito Coast were sought for the diving work. showing that the dangers of this diving were recognized immediately. Despite the good money, Islanders rarely dove. Instaed, an illiterate group of Indians who spoke another language, were given dive gear and put to work without any diving instruction at all. As a result, thousands of Miskito Indians have been injured and paralyzed hundreds killed during the two decades of this industry. None of the Miskito Indians understood why.
Last winter I brought this problem to the attention of Red Lobster's Dick Monroe, in hopes of getting this corporation to assist in the education and medical needs of the besieged Miskito divers. Since then, I have received no help; nor has anyone else, to my knowledge, though serval agencies have tried. The only discernible response I saw from Red Lobster was to cancel their 800 number (too many angry callers and run a hugh television ad campaign declaring last March as "lobster month".
I know of plans to organize doemonstrations at the Red Lobster Restaurants, which could help them decide to provide some assitance to the Miskitos! Red Lobster has built its empire with the blood of the Miskito Indians, and refuses to acknowledge any debt to those people, or any responsibility for the environmental disasters they've profitted from, hoping to slither free and penetrate other remote regions. Do they realize how many divers eat at their restaurants? Perhaps they insult us by underestimating the revulsion America feels toward human and environmental devastation. Maybe they're right about the apathy of people...I don't think so.
From 1979 through 1988, during the Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, U.S. special forces teams were in Honduras and offered free diver training to the lobster fleet. Interest was almost non-existent. During this same period, the Honduran fleet was able to double its fishing area because Nicaragua was not able to defend its territorial waters. The lobster "gold rush" was on! Money was so good that 10,000 to 12,000 dollar high pressure compressors were thrown away rather than lose time repairing them. Still, no one was interested in funding a recompression chamber for the Miskitos.
Depth and pressure guages have never been supplied to the Indian divers, much less buoyancy- compensation vests or watches. Only the boat captains knew the true depths as the shallow waters were systematically depleted of lobster and progressively deeper waters were fished. The bends rates increased with depth.
In 1985, "in water O2" was introduced to Roatan by Doc Radowski and we have video proving its effectiveness in treating paralyzed divers. This revolutionary cure was ignored by the lobster fleet.
In 1986, A.D. Stone, with the help of Oceaneering International, Inc., and the Episcopalian Church, brought a chamber to Roatan. Unfortunately, it sat idle for two years due to lack of local interest and funding. Finally, in 1988, the Episopalian Missionaries got help from Anthony's Key Resort and established the recompression chamber there in a building thankfully donated by the resort. The chamber has treated hundreds of divers in the intervening years, 90% of whom have been Miskitos.
More diver regulators were sold to the Bay Island fleet during the period than anywhere else in the world, without anyone reacting to the lack of accompanying safety gear. The industry, which started in 40 to 50 foot depths, progressed to 90 feet and beyond, until today, when depths of 160 feet are common. In the mid '80's, the 90 foot level was broached and that became the "red line" for severe decompression sickness. Quadriplegia became more common. Since the late '80's, the bends rates have grown exponetially with each foot of depth, growing into the loathsome plague that ravages the Caribbean today. There have been reports of quadriplegics being cast overboard, marooned at sea! We haven't been able to confirm these reports as yet.
As intense overfishing decimated the lobster populations and forced the divers ever deeper, the economic pressures to produce worthwhile catches rose with the depths. Steel tanks holding 72 cubic feet of air at 2,450 psi were replaced by 90 cubic foot aluminum tanks holding 3,000 psi. Tanks that were once "hot filled" on deck, were now cooled while being filled, substantially increasing the amount of air that they could hold. This new efficiency enabled the divers to remain at depth longer and catch more lobster. Ironically, what was good for the hunt was bad for the hunter, as the longer divers promoted decompression sickness and further destroyed the breeding stock of the lobster.
The economic pressure to meet market demands also led to ecological disasters. Faced with a dwindling lobster supply, operators of this literal Navy of 200 ships started buying thousands of gallons of chlorax. The divers would inject this poison into the reef structurs, flushing out lobsters from the honeycombed labyrinths, indiscriminately killing all life forms in the affected area. Done in secrecy, miles from any witnesses, no one can tell the extent of the damage to the heart of the Caribbean, a hugh area extending from the Bay Islands through Nicaragua and north to Jamaica and beyond, into Columbia and evne Cuban waters; likely further. The Honduran fleet is the largest poaching fleet in the world.
Belatedly, the Honduran government has just established a fishing season for lobster, as the demise of the lobster looms near. As for the problems of the ethnic minority of Miskito Indian divers, "futher studies are needed". As ridiculous as it may sound, the Honduran government classifies working divers in the lobster industry as "sport divers," and therefore not entitled the protection of labor laws of the benefits of social security. They're only Indians.
The Miskitos are really quite a famous people, under a different name, one that you know very well. After Somoza fell from power in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas found that the Miskitos were fiercely independent and would yield to communist power and influence. War was used by the Sandanistas to try to either control or exterminate the Miskito Indians. Thousands of Miskitos fled across the Honduran border to swell the ranks of the "Contras". Over the years many "Nicaraguan Miskito Indians" stayed in Honduras, as the entire regiion is their ancestral homeland, regardless of national borders. Once these people were our allies, now we've forgotten them.
The U.S. Navy donated a recompression chamber and facility to the Honduran Navy at a cost of some $200,000 (US). The Hondurans keep the chamber well inland and discourage its use by the lobster divers. I'm told that sick divers have been turned away from the unit; at any rate, it's in a very inconvenient location for its purpose.
Vast fortunes have been made in the lobster industry, so that the profits are referred to as "red gold". The money has been diversified into many industries: shipping lines, real estate, travel agencies, cable television, and, ironically, dive resorts.
There is hope on the horizon, and one of the brighter points comes in the person of Bob Armington, an ex-New Orleanian and a graduate of the Diver's Institute of Technology, in Seattle. Bob spent time working offshore in the "oil patch" before being contacted by Dr. Marx about the problems of Moskitia. He traveled to Honduras to see the problems first hand and was so moved by the injustices there, that he started a diver training school with his own money. Since then, he has been funded by the Moravian Church to the tune of $100 US per month, both to live on and to run the school. He has received some donations from the fishing fleet, for which he is very grateful, but for the most part his efforts are hindered by a lack of finances. In spite of this, he has persevered and made great stride in diver education.
My son, Jesse, and I were in the village of Cocbillia in October 1993, when he graduated his first class of 10 proud commercial divers. Earlier that day, he had buried an Indian diver in the jungle.
Bob is a Viet Nam veteran who sees his vision for the school as his second chance at dealing with third world peple. He is determined to hold on and make the school reach its potential in spite of obstacles that would stop a lesser man. He is succeeding.
I returned alone to Cocobillia this last March and found that Bob had graduated 70 divers from his school and ahd trained a Miskito named Roberto, an ex-diver and assistant pastor of the local Church, to teach while he opens a new school at Kalkira, east along the coast. Though few in comparison to the overall number of divers, his graduates are being well received by the industry and have managed to avoid paralysis through using water-stops and by increasing their surface intervals between dives. In this case, less is truly more and the men have not only been productive enough to please their captains, but have astonished themselves and their fellow divers at their lack of joint pains, a symptom of the bends. These men feel comparatively healthy and are spreading the word through the industry. Bob deserves high praise for this educational breakthrough, but there is much more to be done and he could use your help. He can be reached through this address: Robert Armington, Mopawi, Puerto Lempiro, gracias a Dios, Honduras, C.A., telephone 011-504-98-7460.
Other breakthroughs are taking place. I have been able to get the word out through The Working Diver (now The Universal Diver) and have been priviledged to speak at the tek '94 and DEMA shows on this subject. Pressure Magazine, the journal of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society has thankfully printed Dr. Millington's and my article and reprints are being requested internationally. Interest is snowballing. Cal Dive and Oceaneering International, Inc., have located chambers and perhaps other equipment for me to funnel through to Moskitia for the medical emergencies of divers. PADI has donated Spanish dive manual; Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Systems of Denver is donating surface oxygen supply units and chamber plumbing. Those good people have even started fundraising events to assist me with some expense money. DEMA tells me that they're mailing out my press releases to their membership.
We've got our hands around the throat of this problem, but it's still slimy and strong. A little bit of good right now can tip this evil balance and change this historic tragedy for the better. Together, we are very close to ending the emergency part of this "epic of abuse" in Honduras, so right now...PUSH!
I'm hoping that a success in Honduras can be used as an example for the rest of the third world. Reports are filtering in that confirm any suspicions that the epidemic of decompression sickness in Honduras is just the fin of the shark.
You are eye to ink with the first report that states that there is a worldwide pandemic of decompression disease in third world fisheries. I have reports that certain villages in remote regions are suffering a rate of paralysis that reaches 40% of the male population. Africa, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, India, South America, all have regions that are plagued by killer decompression sickness. I can see the monster taking form now and I'm telling you that this investigation will tear the cloak off the most brutal case of international maritime exploitation to ever blacken the pages of seafaring history.
I could use a little help. You know what they say, "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing". We've got chambers from Cal Dive and Oceaneering International, Inc., valued at $35,000 to $40,000 a piece; however, I still need compressors, oxygen generators, radios, transportation cost and operating capital. I've incorporated SOS (Sub Ocean Safety), a non-profit eductational organization, in order to accept your donations. I also want to form an expeditionary medical investigation team that could take on the proejct of documenting this worldwide pestilence and come up with proposals of actions. Call, FAX, or wirte: The Universal Diver, P.O. Box 834, Lacombe, LA 70445. Phone: (504)882-7286, FAX (504) 882-3557.
Last Modified: February 4, 2003
