The following blog is an excerpt from, “Crews of All-Women Combat Veterans Find Healing Through Scuba Diving with Their ‘Sea Sisters’” by the National Park Foundation.
Some of our most meaningful park locations – the World War II era remains of the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor, for example – are underwater. And the archaeologists at the National Park Service Submerged Resources Center (SRC) are tasked with studying and protecting these places.
Led by Chief Archaeologist Dave Conlin, the SRC’s dive teams locate and document underwater artifacts. They then share their discoveries with park staff and the public.
More than five million acres of our National Park System is hidden from view … unless you have a scuba diving certification.
But Conlin’s small team can’t be everywhere at once – so with funding from the National Park Foundation (NPF), the SRC is launching a new service corps to protect more of our parks’ underwater treasures. In partnership with the WAVES Project (Wounded American Veterans Experience Scuba), the SRC is training women veterans to participate in diving missions.
There are nearly 2 million women veterans in the U.S. – but many of the supports in place for the military community don’t adequately address their needs. The SRC aims to change that while accomplishing important work in the parks.
A recent project brought together veterans and professional divers, “Sea Sisters,” the SRC, and Women Divers Hall of Fame and Wounded American Veterans Experience SCUBA, a nonprofit that introduces disabled American veterans to the therapeutic benefits of scuba diving. They teamed up to protect the submerged fishes, coral reefs, and ancient shipwrecks that lay beneath the aquamarine waters of the Florida Key’s Biscayne National Park.
Continue reading this article, “Crews of All-Women Combat Veterans Find Healing Through Scuba Diving with Their ‘Sea Sisters’” by the National Park Foundation here.
