Decompression sickness practices in lobster diving among the indigenous Miskito people, who face great economic pressures. At that time it was estimated that in the country over 2000 divers had been injured and 300 others had died since the 1970s. In the United States, it is common for medical insurance not to cover treatment for the bends that is the result of recreational diving. This is because scuba diving is considered an elective and "high-risk" activity and treatment for decompression sickness is expensive. A typical stay in a recompression chamber will easily cost several thousand dollars, even before emergency transportation is included.
Scuba diving components of the diver's breathing gas accumulate in the tissues during exposure to elevated pressure during a dive, and must be eliminated during the ascent to avoid the formation of symptomatic bubbles in tissues where the concentration is too high for the gas to remain in solution. This process is called decompression. Most recreational and professional scuba divers avoid obligatory decompression stops by following a dive profile which only requires a limited rate of ascent for decompression, but will commonly also do an optional short shallow decompression stop known as a safety stop to further reduce risk before surfacing. In