A declining fish population has forced Cabo Rojo’s diving fishermen into deeper waters, where many exceed safe dive times to make a living. Their efforts can lead to decompression sickness, and emergency treatment is hours away.
Andrés Maldonado recalls the first time he crawled out of the sea and went blind.
The then-19-year-old diving fisherman thought his left leg was moving by itself. I poked myself with a knife and drew blood, but it didn’t hurt, he says, as the coastal breeze drifts into his home, decorated with ocean colors and paintings of underwater creatures. I was only able to see a black dot in the distance.
Doctors diagnosed him with decompression sickness, or the bends, a condition that occurs when the body’s pressure reduces too quickly. Nitrogen that normally dissolves in the tissue and bloodstream instead builds and forms bubbles, similar to a person opening a carbonated soft drink only much more deadly. The blood stops circulating, and tissue functions diminish.
Maldonado, now 60, recovered in days and returned to work. Then he got sick again, a pattern increasingly common among fishermen in Cabo Rojo, an ecologically diverse region of mangroves and white sand beaches on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast. Warming water temperatures and violent hurricanes have decreased fish populations, forcing these self-employed workers to risk their health in deeper waters. Many fishermen exceed safe dive times and lack access to treatment for decompression sickness, turning an otherwise curable disease into a lethal one.
Even though you understand, when it’s a job, you have to work hard, says Maldonado, who wears thick glasses because the condition has permanently damaged his vision.
An energetic man with an athletic build, Maldonado has worked the waters since he was 13. Back then, decades before Hurricane Maria swept through in 2017 and wrecked the seabed, grouper, lobster and snapper swam closer to the shore. Back then, he says, divers did not face the affliction so regularly. He knows of around 10 incidents since January; one of about 40 local fishermen recently fell ill with decompression sickness that severely affected his brain.
The coronavirus has only further upset Maldonado’s livelihood as the restaurants that bought fish closed and customers stopped spending money. Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricane Maria, a bankruptcy and protests in July 2019 over alleged governmental mismanagement that led to the governor’s resignation. Maldonado has lost about 90% of his income.
The sea surface temperature surrounding Puerto Rico has risen by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1910, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Even so, limited data exist on the number of diving fishermen afflicted by decompression sickness in Puerto Rico. But since 2017, up to 30 diving fishermen a year have undergone treatment for the first time at the Centro Médico hospital in San Juan, the capital and location of Puerto Rico’s only 24-hour emergency treatment chamber, says Pedro Luis Arroyo Ramírez, a specialist in underwater medicine. The per capita number is similar to that of fishing countries in the Caribbean, Japan or Mexico, he says.
The University of Puerto Rico is searching for ways to improve divers’ situations with federal funds from NOAA. University researchers have given six diving fishermen digital watches to gather information about diving patterns. They share the data with hyperbaric chamber doctors who can analyze diving trends and measure the risks. The project, known as Sea Grant, also educates divers on the perils of decompression sickness, and consumers on more sustainable seafood from shallower waters.
2020 Global Press Journal