Many of Hawaii’s diving fishermen make several deep dives each day to catch fish with nets, spears or traps. The fishermen are experienced divers, yet they neither follow conventional diving procedures nor use standard decompression schedules, such as the U.S. Navy Dive Tables. This unconventional type of diving rarely leads to decompression sickness, but when it does, it is severe, often affecting the central nervous system.
Even though a diver may never be afflicted by the pain or other symptoms of decompression sickness, he may suffer from dysbaric osteonecrosis, or bone necrosis (in slang, “bone rot”), if he habitually practices inadequate decompression. It would appear that, as diving procedures become less structured, the incidence of bone necrosis increases.
The purpose of this article is to inform, not only the diving…