Special Operation Veterans Take on a New Mission: Marine Conservation | Article

The ocean is an oasis; its diverse ecosystems teeming with life. These rich waters, complex habitats, and the wildlife they sustain provide untold benefits: phytoplankton produce 50 percent of the world's oxygen, sea creatures become food for billions of people worldwide, and fishermen and other ocean industry workers sustain hundreds of communities. In the United States alone, the ocean economy contributes $282 billion to the GDP and supports more than three million jobs.

However, this vital system is at risk. Increasing acidification, rampant overexploitation, and devastating pathogens are just a few of the urgent threats facing marine environments. Conservation and restoration projects are crucial to saving and preserving this essential resource.

Credit: Force Blue

A new force is leading the charge to combat these pressing problems: Special Operation Veterans. For military veterans, the return to civilian life can be difficult. They face unique challenges navigating a world outside of the purpose-driven life of military service.

FORCE BLUE is addressing both of these seemingly unrelated problems—the hardships veterans encounter during their transition to civilian life and the need for marine conservation efforts. Teams of special operation veterans and marine scientists are deployed on discrete missions spanning a number of objectives, from rebuilding hurricane-damaged coral reefs to preventing disease spread to surveying sea turtles. Projects to date are completed throughout South Florida, the Florida Keys, and Puerto Rico.

FORCE BLUE employs individuals who were trained as military divers, worked in special operations, deployed on at least one combat mission, and are no longer on active duty. Their program attracts some of the most highly-skilled divers on the planet, then retrains them for a new purpose. Special operation veterans are equipped with a mission-driven, task-oriented mindset, an agile capacity to learn, and a work ethic that allows them to amplify the impacts of conservation initiatives.

Credit: Force Blue

Veterans take conservation education courses from field experts covering a range of marine topics, such as identifying species, growing and transplanting corals, and surveying shipwrecks and artificial reefs. The training program aims to instill a new view of the ocean: instead of an obstacle to overcome, it becomes something in need of saving.

For the participating veterans, FORCE BLUE is a form of mission-driven therapy. It returns to them a sense of purpose and helps to ease the adjustment to civilian life.

“It feels good to actually take the training that we had and implement it into real world use. That was one of the things I loved about the military. We had mission. We had purpose. There was something that we were doing every day and there was reason behind it,” said Geoff Reeves, a U.S. Navy SEAL, describing his involvement.

Special operation veterans become eco-warriors, using their incredible talents to tackle each conservation mission with fearlessness and pride. FORCE BLUE Co-founder and former U.S. Marine Corps Recon Rudy Reyes puts it in a nutshell: “Aptitude and ability, discipline and knowledge, purpose is the keystone that keeps it together.”

The dive teams at FORCE BLUE have partnered with federal, state, private, and research institutions to complete several deployments over the last three years, including disaster response work restoring reefs in the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Maria and Irma. Corals reefs are communities’ first line of defense against violent storms by acting as a buffer to safeguard neighboring land from waves and floods. Further, corals build the bedrock of marine ecosystems, fostering biodiversity and supporting life. To rebuild damaged reefs, divers engaged in activities like transplanting fragments and restabilizing displaced coral heads. Their efforts in the Florida Keys secured more than 500 coral fragment cuts, which were taken to nurseries, in the hope that one day they can be outplanted.

Credit: Force Blue

In addition to hurricane response, FORCE BLUE helps to reduce the spread of marine pathogens and aid infected ocean life. During a rescue mission to save green sea turtles affected by fibropapillomatosis, a disease that causes tumor growth, dive teams captured sick creatures and brought them to the Turtle Hospital in Marathon for treatment. Elsewhere, along the Florida Keys coral reef track, the team assisted in combating stony coral tissue loss disease, a deadly pathogen impacting more than half of the reefs’ coral species. Using different techniques, like amoxicillin applications, the teams helped treat and care for infected corals.

Today, FORCE BLUE’s dive teams are engaging in a new mission, building off an earlier project supporting Super Bowl LIV’s greening initiative, in which 100 corals were successfully transplanted in Biscayne Bay, off the coast of Miami. FORCE BLUE is now working to expand this project from 100 corals to 100 yards of coral restoration, the length of a football field.

100 Yards of Hope honors the National Football League’s (NFL) centennial season and American military veterans. The program unites several different partners, including NFL Green, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Aquarium, Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science, and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School’s Rescue a Reef Program.

As the Super Bowl moves from the west (Miami) to the east (Tampa) coast of Florida, coral transplants are making the same trip in reverse. Corals are grown in Tampa’s Florida Aquarium, but will make their home in Biscayne Bay. The project celebrates and highlights a uniquely Floridian year of football.

As FORCE BLUE looks to the future, it hopes to grow and continue to serve the marine environment, as well as veterans, by proving that marine conservation isn’t just for scientists. Emily Patrolia, FORCE BLUE’s Public Affairs Director and President of ESP Advisors, says, “When you bring together different groups of people, it allows accessibility to all different types of people to understand the importance of the ocean and its conservation.”

There is no one solution to solve the problems threatening the ocean. Creative, interdisciplinary approaches are needed that operate on all scales and bring together individuals from all backgrounds. FORCE BLUE is one example of the work that can be accomplished when different groups come together for a common purpose.

Author: Emma Walker