A group called Force Blue, which does ocean conservation work, is providing what they call “mission therapy” to veterans who miss the camaraderie and the sense of purpose of service.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Earlier this year, a group of elite former Navy divers and special operations veterans gathered for a secret mission at a safe house in the Florida Panhandle. OK, just kidding. It wasn’t a safe house. It was actually an Airbnb, and the mission wasn’t so secret at all. It was a group called Force Blue, which does coral reef restoration and other ocean conservation work, providing what they call mission therapy to veterans who miss the camaraderie and the sense of purpose they got while in the service. NPR’s Quil Lawrence joined them and sent us these voices.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Have to have my knee strong enough (ph)…
ANGEL FIORE: It’s kind of full circle because, you know, here we are, a force – military force that’s trained for basically…
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: You can say blowing [expletive] up.
FIORE: (Laughter) Yeah.
LAWRENCE: (Laughter).
FIORE: You know, weapons of mass destruction, and here we are – weapons of mass construction.
LAWRENCE: Angel Fiore was a Navy diver for 10 years. Now he helps other vets use the same skill for ocean conservation.
FIORE: These guys are the best-trained divers in the world. We take their skills that they learned from the military, repurpose them for conservation work in all these projects, ranging from coral restoration to marine debris clean-up to building a living shoreline defense system.
(SOUNDBITE OF STONES FALLING)
LAWRENCE: Today, it’s building a natural, living shoreline, which starts with dozens of volunteers carrying tons of stone out into the water of Choctawhatchee Bay near Fort Walton Air Force base in Florida.
(SOUNDBITE OF JET ENGINE ROARING)
ALISON MCDOWELL: You know, we are a military town. We – you know, where other people might complain about the sounds of loud jets going overhead, we…
LAWRENCE: Radio journalists…
MCDOWELL: That’s right.
LAWRENCE: …Complain.
MCDOWELL: Right. We love that. We embrace that. That’s the sound of freedom. We love our military guys. We get a lot of help from them. We love working with Force Blue. They come, and they bring a whole lot of energy. They’re a lot of fun.
LAWRENCE: Alison McDowell directs the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance, which invited Force Blue here to help build a seawall which oysters will attach to – oysters that can filter millions of gallons of water in the bay.
MCDOWELL: Living shorelines are kind of a nature-based infrastructure or a nature-based solution to erosion that can take the place of a seawall. So what we do is we go in and create oyster breakwaters. Today, we’re using limestone rock, and we’re creating three 50-foot reefs. So it looks like we’re doing hard labor. We’re – and we are because we’re putting the rocks…
LAWRENCE: But it’s actually science.
MCDOWELL: It’s actually science.
(SOUNDBITE OF STONE DROPPING)
LAWRENCE: The people doing the hard labor – they know they’re unusual converts to environmentalism.
STEVE GONZALEZ: My name is Steve Gonzalez – nickname Gonzo – retired Navy SEAL master chief and Force Blue special operations director. We’re transitioning from the warrior to the warrior conservationalists. And this sounds – I don’t want this to sound arrogant, but a scientist can say, hey, we’ve got to do a better job of caring for our coral reefs because they provide a lot of oxygen. Yeah, whatever. You’re a Birkenstock-wearing hippie, all right? The Navy SEAL says the same thing, word for word, and they go, oh, man, we’ve got to take a better – they appreciate the fact that we’re their mouthpiece now. We’re making conservation cool ’cause in the end, it doesn’t matter if you get in from the left side of the boat or the right side of the boat, we’re all on the same boat that care for this planet.
LAWRENCE: Gonzo served 34 years – lots of that time underwater and mostly in the dark. And get this, he never knew scuba diving was supposed to be fun.
GONZALEZ: I got out in 2016. I went in in 1982 and got – retired in 2016. No lie, I’d actually never seen colors in the water because I was always diving, you know, 10 o’clock, midnight, 2 o’clock in the morning, and in water, you can barely see your hand in front of your face. So to see that – see the color, see the vibrant colors, to be in warm water with amazing visibility, nobody trying to hunt you down, you know – yes, it was definitely different.
But also as we’re planting the coral, the – you’ll plant that coral, you’ll go back and get another piece from the scientist, and by the time you come back to that planting site, there’s already marine life checking it out, like, being curious and everything. And you can see the impact that you’re making, right then and there, to the marine environment and to our planet. I use the term transcendent, you know, because it is. Like, you really – it really is moving.
LAWRENCE: And Gonzalez never knew which of his buddies might need this kind of thing, too.
GONZALEZ: A great friend of mine – we served together at one of the SEAL teams, and he said, I’d love to come check that out. He’s in the van, and within a half an hour, he says, Gonzo, you have no idea how much I need this. And I was like, what are you talking about, man? You’re well adjusted. You’re doing great. He says, I just miss being part of something special. And unfortunately, when guys start to struggle a little bit, not being part of something special, missing that, now what? – that’s when problems arise. Depression starts to get in (ph), the pressures of transitioning and everything. And we do have a suicide problem in special operations communities, as I’m sure you know.
LAWRENCE: Transition from military service has been flagged as a time when suicide and mental health issues spike. And that’s not only for veterans who saw combat. A crisis can hit anyone, even if they never went to war.
For you, transitioning out of the military, was that – how did that go?
NATHAN QUINN: It – pretty much the way it goes for a lot of guys. You’re struggling a bit. You grow out your beard. You gain 15 pounds. You make some relationship mistakes. You forget about your family and all the hardship you put them through while you were in the military. And now you do it to them again by just disappearing.
LAWRENCE: Nathan Quinn was a special forces medic but never deployed to war. When he came to his first Force Blue mission, they told him he needed to get a mental health check-up as part of the deal. At first, he said no way. Sure, he was feeling a bit lost, without purpose, but he wasn’t shell-shocked.
QUINN: I didn’t deserve the support of the VA. I didn’t deserve the support. I didn’t lose my legs. I hadn’t gotten shot.
LAWRENCE: The folks leading the trip said, no mental health screening, no dive. Turns out Quinn was struggling, and Force Blue got him some care. Now he comes back because he says healing the ocean and the living coral – that’s its own kind of therapy.
QUINN: I was definitely lost at sea, and Force Blue’s been an incredible boon. It’s absolutely changed my life.
It really is a swords-to-plowshares kind of thing, and you’re also basically giving your lifeblood to this creature that you’ve only just met. I mean, these are just absolutely stunning, bright-colored coral. And by building those reefs back, we can actually prevent the amount of devastation for the next storm. And that’s sort of the neat thing about Force Blue overall. It’s an idea of taking people who have a hard time with the transition as they come off the service and placing their – somewhere where we can thrive. And so there’s a certain parallel there with the coral as well.
LAWRENCE: This was supposed to take two days, but the Force Blue folks moved 40 tons of rock by hand and finished mid-afternoon, with a lunch break. Oysters will quickly latch onto the rock walls they’ve built and start filtering the water. Reeds planted behind the new tidal wall will stem erosion and catch runoff.
GONZALEZ: (Shouting) Last load.
(APPLAUSE)
GONZALEZ: Clap it up, man.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Whoo (ph).
GONZALEZ: That was an awesome day, man. And I’ll tell you…
LAWRENCE: That’s Gonzo – Gonzalez, again – cheering the crew on after breaking their previous record for tons of rock moved in a day.
GONZALEZ: I’ve seen all the death and destruction in the world firsthand. And to be able to see something so beautiful that’s caring for our planet, whether it’s out planting coral or building an oyster bed or rescuing sea turtles or you name it, it truly is moving. And it has given me hope that the world is still a beautiful place and you just have to find it. And once you find it, become a part of it.
LAWRENCE: Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES LAPPING)
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