PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua - Clebas Thompson was crawling around in the murky haze 140 feet below the surface of the Caribbean looking for spiny lobster when he felt a sudden sickness.

''It was late in the afternoon and I had gone through about 12 tanks [of air] and was feeling really dizzy like I was drunk,'' Thompson recalls, slurring his speech and struggling to tame his jerking leg. ``I got scared and swam to the surface and that's when it hit me. I started throwing up and then I had some sort of attack.''

What hit him was a severe case of decompression sickness, or ''the bends.'' He was taken to a decompression chamber in Puerto Cabezas that saved his life, but it was too late to save him from being a virtual quadriplegic at the age of 28.

As foot soldiers in the $40-million-dollar lobster export industry, Miskito Indian divers like Thompson are increasingly being killed and crippled as they hunt deeper into the sea for thinning patches of lobster to place on U.S. tables.

Facts are hard to come by in this Nicaraguan slice of the Caribbean that never graces travel brochures. Here, there are more marshes than white-sand beaches.

Young men in wheelchairs seem to outnumber tourists. Often they have suffered the bends, caused by a buildup of nitrogen in his bloodstream -- the inevitable result from diving too deep for too long and surfacing too fast.

The local Association for the Integration of the Disabled into Society estimates there are 1,500 crippled ex-divers along Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, although other organizations cite about half that number. A 1999 World Bank report on Nicaragua's Miskito divers found ``some limited medical studies have shown close to 100 percent of divers show symptoms of neurological damage -- presumably due to inadequate decompression.''

And according to the Louisiana-based foundation, Sub Ocean Safety Intl. (SOS), a full 30 percent of the region's lobster divers will suffer a ''traumatic accident or die'' within their first five years on the job.

Poorly trained, shoddily equipped and completely unsupervised, many divers are being pushed well beyond international norms by profit-driven boat captains and exporters, says SOS founder Robert Izdepski.

''There is no effort by the industry to teach them about the real dangers of diving because they'd be scared to death to work,'' he says. ``This is like a mine owner knowing the shaft is crumbling and sending men into their deaths anyway.''

Without depth or pressure gauges, divers are encouraged to work from sunrise to sunset, typically going through eight to 12 tanks a day for 15 days, an amount of diving far exceeding the limits of safe diving. Most work without contracts, lured by the prospect of making $2.40 to $3.00 per pound of lobster. Onshore, the fleet sells the haul to one of the handful of processing and export plants that place 90 percent of the product in the U.S. mainland.

There, in restaurants and stores, a five- to six-ounce tail can fetch $15 to $20 dollars. ''Sometimes I could bring in 80 or 100 pounds in a day and make over $1,000 per trip,'' recalls Thompson. ``There's no other work out here that makes so much money.''

His salary was huge in this country where per-capita income is less than $500 a year. But the money never seemed to stick. The only amenity in Thompson's one-room home, which he shares with his wife and four children, is a 14-inch color TV. He watches cartoons in as he does exercises a therapist taught him.

After more than a year of needing help to eat, urinate or even roll over, in the last three months, he has regained enough strength in his arms and rigidity in his legs to support himself on a walker.

''I haven't left the house in three months, because there's no one that can get me down the stairs,'' he says. ``It's hard to be shut in here all day and not be able to work.''

Dr. Humberto Castro Olayo is the Atlantic coast's only expert in hyperbaric medicine. Since 1996 he has helped over 500 divers and has seen dozens more die, but by his guess that's less than 20 percent of the cases. ''Most of the divers are from little villages,'' he explains. ``When they get sick they just go back to their community. Some die and others stay there paralyzed, but we never hear about it.''

He was hoping a two-month ban on lobster diving would restock the shallow waters and limit injuries, but on a recent night as the season's first boat was docking, his hopes were fading. The Miskito sitting in front of him felt debilitating pain in his back and knees; his reflexes were shot.

''If the chamber were running I would put him in for two hours, because there's no way to tell how many nitrogen bubbles he has built up or what might happen to him,'' Olayo said. For the first time since 1997, the country's three decompression chambers (one of which was donated by SOS) are out of order. ``All I can really do is treat the pain and hope he gets lucky.''

As far as Olayo is concerned, it's the boat owners, who reap huge profits and bring him damaged divers, that deserve the brunt of the blame, but that still leaves plenty to go around.

''I would call it widespread institutional neglect,'' he said, adding that government needs to regulate the industry, and that boat captains and exporters need to take responsibility for their workers as well.

For starters, he suggests that divers should receive adequate training and certification.

By most accounts, the new government that took power this year is taking the problem seriously. For the first time ever, it imposed a two-month lobster moratorium, and labor and health officials have come here to assess the situation.

But this town is used to empty promises. Those who live here aren't holding their breath to await reforms.