Five women veterans spend a week diving to clear marine debris from Biscayne National Park

Five women veterans spent July 5 to 11, 2021, diving to remove marine debris from Biscayne National Park with the National Park Service. They came through the Wounded American Veterans Experience SCUBA Project (WAVES), a non-profit that creates opportunities for veterans with service-connected disabilities, and their families, to experience scuba diving.

The project

Other partners included the Women Divers Hall of Fame, which recognizes women leaders and innovators in diving, and funding came from the National Park Foundation, the National Park Service’s official charitable partner. The veterans formed part of an all-female dive team made up of Biscayne National Park staff, staff of the Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center and the University of Miami, working from a Horizon Divers charter boat that also had an all-female crew.

The veterans

The park’s article profiles five women who served in the Marine Corps, the Army and the Navy. One spent 13 years in the Marine Corps as a meteorologist and oceanographer and deployed to Afghanistan. One served four years in the Navy as a Master at Arms, with duty at Guantanamo Bay and aboard the USS Peleliu, and is a third-generation veteran. One was a Navy musician stationed at Pearl Harbor. One is an Army combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2009. One was an Army combat photographer and public affairs sergeant deployed to Iraq from 2005 to 2006. Among the themes in the veterans’ accounts in the park’s article:

• Some said diving had helped them recover from their service, giving a sense of purpose, independence and peace.
• Doing conservation work underwater gave their dives a task, and a way to give something back to the ocean that had helped them.
• Working alongside other women veterans and scientists was a high point of the week, and the shared goal was cleaning and protecting coral reefs.

Sources

• National Park Service, Wounded American Veterans Experience SCUBA Project July 2021, Biscayne National Park; the veterans’ names, quotations and photographs, and their families’ personal details, are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.