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. 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.Īfter 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. As the lobsters began to disappear, the opportunity to harvest new species, such as the sea cucumber, began to emerge. In 2013, the country exported $200,000 worth of sea cucumbers, but the figure is likely higher now.Īfter decades of harvesting, the spiny lobster population has now significantly decreased and divers are often forced to dive deeper than 150 feet. Ninety-five percent of the catch was exported to the United States. During the 2014-15 season, Honduras exported $40 million worth of spiny lobsters, a quarter of which were harvested by scuba divers. 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. For 40 years now, the Miskito from Honduras and Nicaragua have been considered the best divers in Central America. The Captain Jimmy is one of the 40 or so boats hunting for spiny lobster in Honduran waters. The skipper sails to a larger vessel offshore. Every day they dive for sea cucumbers that will be exported to Asia where they are considered a delicacy.Īt dawn, we embark on one of the 12 small wooden boats that constitute the divers’ fleet. More than 100 Miskito men have been living here for months, sleeping in close quarters on bunk beds and hammocks under a thatch roof. THE HARVESTĬayo 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. They go on for four hours, diving again and again to make a living and support their families. My two Miskito dive partners are not afforded that luxury. Exhausted after fighting stiff current at 80 feet, I return to the boat and cap a 20-minute dive. 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. My regulator has the taste of motor oil, and my head hurts from the blazing sun and seasickness. I slide my arms into a homemade hose harness and enter the water.
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