Simone M. Scully

Approximately six miles off the coast of Southern Florida and stretching 360 miles from Miami to Dry Tortugas National Park is North America’s only living coral barrier reef.

This Florida reef tract is home to over 50 species of coral, over 150 species of fish — including snapper, colorful parrotfish, barracuda, angelfish, and grouper — and numerous wildlife species, including species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This reef acts as a natural buffer for Florida’s shoreline, lessening wave strength from storms, and it is incredibly important to the local economy. According to NOAA, it is estimated that it generates $3.4 billion in sales every year and supports 36,000 jobs.

But this Florida barrier reef is in trouble, which is why a special forces veteran-led non-profit, called Force Blue, is on a mission to save it.

At first though, the idea for Force Blue came from a much simpler goal, says its co-founder and Executive Director, Jim Ritterhoff. “When this whole thing started, it was literally about helping a friend of mine,” he says.

In summer of 2015 Jim had ran into a friend of his that he hadn’t seen in a while named Rudy Reyes. Rudy was a former Recon Marine who had served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, Jim says, “when I ran into him, I could just tell something was wrong so we had a long talk.” Reyes shared that he had been struggling with PTSD and depression since he retired from the Marines and “he was just sort of lost.”

So Jim asked Rudy to join him on a diving trip in the Cayman Islands, where his friend Keith Sahm owned a recreational diving facility. He hoped that a week away might lift Rudy’ spirits.

“On the very first dive we went on, [Rudy] was amazed because he’d seen a fish,” Jim says. “And we’re like, ‘What are you talking about? That why people scuba-dive down here — it’s to see marine life.’”

But for Rudy, seeing a fish was enriching in a different way than you might expect. As a military-trained combat diver, diving to him had previously only meant hauling 200 pounds of gear underwater, in the dead of night, in order to conduct a dangerous mission. It had never been about enjoyment or sightseeing. So something as simple as seeing a fish suddenly meant a lot more to him and he immediately wanted to get more of his veteran friends to have the same experience.

This sparked an idea. Jim and Keith had been involved in marine conservation for a few years, but they had grown frustrated that due to partisan politics, their work had felt like “preaching to the choir.”

“So we had what we call our ‘Reese’s peanut butter moment,’” says Jim, “where we’re like, ‘wait a second, we can do some real good for out veteran community and at the same time, we can use our veteran community to help the environment and reach an audience that currently isn’t getting the message.”

“[That audience] may not listen to scientists, but they’ll listen to navy seals and they’ll listen to marines because these guys are their heroes.” And thus, Force Blue was born with the dual purpose: help veterans and protect the coral reefs.

Today, Force Blue provides “mission therapy” to former military-trained divers who have seen combat and have served in a special operations unit. It is not a volunteer organization, according to Jim. The 12 special operations veterans that currently make up their two dive teams (and the 6 that they are planning to train and add to their dive teams this summer) are paid for the 4-6 weeks they spend working with Force Blue at a government services rate comparable to what they would make contracting overseas.

“When [veterans] come home after 6-7 combat tours, they often don’t know what to do,” says Jim, “and the easiest thing to do is go run and gun again. We’re trying to break that cycle. We’re giving them the ability to do something else.”

He continues, “our point [at Force Blue] is that it’s not about getting together and going scuba diving. It’s about having this mission to go out and save the world… This is just an extension of service for this great entity, the reef, that can’t fight for itself. That, in itself, is the therapy — not the scuba diving. The therapy is having a purpose again.”

Force Blue’s dive teams helped do coral restoration work with NOAA following Hurricane Irma in Florida and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, as well as other projects with conservation groups. In addition, since 2018, the entire Force Blue organization has relocated to south Florida in order to help preserve and restore the Florida coral reef track.

Specifically, for the past five months, the dive teams have been working to help stop the spread of a deadly outbreak of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease that has been ravaging the reef for the past several years.

“It’s unlike any disease anyone has ever seen in the realm of coral diseases,” says Jim. “It moves 10 times faster than any other diseases ever have and it’s incredibly lethal.” So, he says, the teams have been applying treatments, including applying antibiotics to the margins of diseased coral and making trenches that act a little like “fire breaks,” in the hopes that they can isolate and stop the rapid spread of the disease.

“Ground zero in the fight to save coral reefs everywhere is right here in our backyard,” Jim says. “Don’t think that because you’re not a scuba diver or a scientist, coral reefs don’t matter in your life, because they do… It’s not a stretch to say that if this reef dies, the next thing that’s going to happen is nobody is going to want to go to the Florida Keys. Then pretty soon, nobody is going to be able to go to them because they’re going to be gone.”

He continues, “If we can make an actual difference in Florida, that’s a model for how to make a difference worldwide. And when has America not wanted to be a leader in stuff like this?”