The Caribbean has been identified as a region particularly vulnerable to changing climates, where conservation imperatives have advocated for the protection of fragile ocean ecosystems. As shifting ocean environments refigure marine ecosystems, making fish scarce in the shallows, diver fishermen along the coasts of the Dominican Republic dive deeper and stay longer in risky conditions. As a result, decompression sickness (the bends) has become a pervasive injury, and a way that coastal communities experience changing ocean health. In this talk, I examine the connections between bodily health and environmental health among Dominican diver fishermen, alongside the ways marine conservation initiatives further marginalize the health and well-being of fishing communities. Drawing from ethnographic research with divers who “caught air,” the local term for the bends, I argue that decompression sickness is a symptom of the overlapping injustices of ecologies in decline and colonial conceptualizations of conservation in the Caribbean.

Kyrstin Mallon Andrews is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University. Her work explores shifting ocean ecosystems, environmental politics, and experiences of health among spearfishermen in the Dominican Republic. Her articles and photo essays have appeared in American Anthropologist, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Current Anthropology.