Can we count on your help to train the next generation of ocean stewards and underwater archaeology advocates?

We educate and empower traditionally disenfranchised young people with the tools and know-how to help save our coral reef ecosystem through our DWP Cares program.

We also help train ordinary people to help search for slave shipwrecks and other submerged heritage resources of the African Diaspora through our Underwater Archaeology Training program.

Our mission is to restore our oceans and document the submerged history of African people around the world.

Why?

Black and Brown communities often suffer the direct impact of climate change as a result of sea-level rise, coastal runoff from construction and dumping. We are on the frontlines, and yet our voices are mainly missing from the environmental movement.

Additionally, over 36,000 voyages brought an estimated 12.5 million Africans to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. We know that at least 500, maybe up to 1,000 of those ships, wrecked. But less than a handful of ships have been found and properly documented. The history books often give scant coverage to the global slave trade.

We want to inspire Black and Brown people as leaders in our oceans. We also want to bring the lost history of the global slave trade back into collective memory. Our vision is of a future with young people of color working as citizen scientists, equipped to ask new kinds of questions and offer innovative, equitable and sustainable solutions.

So far, we have trained over 500 divers, participated in 18 missions in six countries and partnered with organizations like the Smithsonian, the Coral Restoration Foundation, NOAA and the National Marine Sanctuaries.

Your financial support will help us conduct missions for possible slave shipwrecks in St. John, Cuba and around the Caribbean, as well as finish our search for the Guerrero, a pirate ship lost off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.

Your donation also helps fund next year’s coral restoration work in Key Largo, Florida where we have lost over 95% of necessary hard corals to disease, global warming and pollution. We are training 20 young divers to ID critically important hard coral species and assess the negative human impact on the coral reef as well as identify key indicator fish, invertebrate and coral species associated with a healthy reef.