Deep beneath the surface of the water, memories of the past and visions of the future coexist.
It was there that Roger Sparks, a former Air Force Pararescue who saved lives in the harshest of combat conditions, found his next mission.
Sparks — a recipient of the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor — spent more than two decades as a rescue specialist with paramedic-level training for special operations within the military. He saved countless troops injured in combat and comforted others as they took their final breath.
“I'd done 25 years in special operations,” he said, “and I was struggling with a lot of experiences that I had from grief, and that cliché post-traumatic stress stuff, and loss of identity, loss of self with leaving the military.”
After retiring in 2016, he rediscovered himself beneath the water as one of the earliest recruits of Force Blue. The nonprofit organization retrains and redeploys former special operations veterans who are military-trained combat divers to work with scientists and environmentalists on marine conservation missions.
Those who once fought for their country now fight for their planet, and also for themselves.
“We call this stuff mission therapy,” Sparks said. “It's basically serving something outside of ourselves to serve ourselves … Healing things to heal ourselves.”
Which is why Sparks, after Hurricane Irma in September of 2017, was on a mission to heal a coral reef.
The storm in the Florida Keys had displaced and toppled an ancient pillar coral, leaving the multi-ton reef tilted upside down on the ocean floor where it would be left to die without intervention.
When Sparks was told of this by marine specialists, his problem-solving training brought him back to his days of recovery diving, which occasionally required extraction in remote parts of the sea.
“They're like, ‘This thousands-of-years-old coral is dying right now, we can't do anything about it,’” Sparks said. “And I was like, ‘If we just grab some lift bags and some underwater concrete, I think that we could basically right this pillar coral and then concrete it back down to the substrate and it's gonna live.”
So, that’s exactly what they did.
Using the lift bags — inflatable diving tools used to move heavy objects underwater — and the concrete, Sparks and his fellow Force Blue members quickly turned the coral upright and secured it in place.
When they returned to the surface, they were greeted by marine specialists in awe of how the mission was accomplished.
“They were, like, hugging each other and crying like, ‘Holy smokes, you guys did this! This is totally amazing!’” Sparks said. “And to me, I was like, ‘That was kind of easy.’”
Easy, perhaps, to those who had faced far greater challenges underwater. But also, proof of concept that Force Blue could be successful.
“It just started with this crazy idea of pairing special operations career combat veteran kind of guys with the world of marine conservation,” Sparks said. “And it seemed very unlikely a match at the time, but it's worked out beautifully.”
’This has saved my life’
In 2015, Jim Ritterhoff owned an advertising agency in New York.
The son of a World War II veteran and a lifelong scuba diver, he had planned a trip to Cayman Islands with his daughter. Shortly before the trip, he received a call from his friend Rudy Reyes, a former U.S. Marine struggling with PTSD and depression since returning home from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The two met for dinner.
“You could tell something was kind of gone in his eyes,” Ritterhoff said. “And he went on to explain to me that he had just been in rehab.”
Ritterhoff invited Reyes on the trip to the Cayman Islands. When they arrived and went scuba diving, Reyes underwent a transformation after seeing an environment he was well accustomed to in a new light.
“Special operations veterans don't have the luxury of looking around when they're diving,” Ritterhoff said. “They're diving at night, typically, in not such wonderful places, off doing not such wonderful things.”
Reyes was now seeing crystal blue water, coral reefs, marine life and a new world emerging from a familiar but yet very different setting.
“He was like, ‘We got to get more of my guys down to experience this,’” Ritterhoff said. “So, then the idea was, what if we could create an organization for military trained combat divers that could put them back into service promoting marine conservation. A cause greater than themselves, a way to continue to serve, a way to have purpose and meaning, but also an amazing workforce for a marine scientific community that desperately needs the help.”
Force Blue was born.
“I came home,” Ritterhoff said, “told my wife I was quitting my job and selling my agency and going to start a nonprofit and we would see where it went.”
"I've had guys literally tell me, ‘Thank you. This has saved my life,. And that's not hyperbole when it comes from [Pararescue] or Green Beret.”
Jim Ritterhoff, Force Blue co-founder
It went on to greatly benefit not only the environment but the veterans who found a new purpose in protecting it.
The three prerequisites for becoming a member of Force Blue are: being a special operations veteran who is dive qualified, honorably discharged and in good standing with their community.
Force Blue now has a veteran contingent of over 40 members who rotate on as many as 20 deployments a year around the globe.
"I've had guys literally tell me, ‘Thank you. This has saved my life,’” Ritterhoff said. And that's not hyperbole when it comes from [Pararescue] or Green Beret or whatever. I don't think we as civilians understand what 20 years of warfare created, and the difficulty that we just sort of left to an entire generation of people with what's next.”
‘I've seen a lot of the evil and ugliness of this world’
When Steve “Gonzo” Gonzalez was 14 years old, he knew he wanted to travel the world.
The military was his path, and his passport, to doing so.
After high school, he joined the Navy and was stationed in Italy. His application for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training – better known as BUD/S, a rigorous training course for Navy SEALs – took years to get approved because his position in the Navy was undermanned. He didn’t enter the program until he was 32 years old.
“So, I'm one of the oldest graduates to make it through,” he said proudly.
He advanced from being a SEAL regular operator on the East Coast to a sniper, then to troop chief, then to operations master chief in charge of training SEAL teams.
After a total of 34 years of service, and after seeing the world, he’s now the special projects and events director for Force Blue.
"I did a number of deployments, as most of our veterans have,” Gonzalez said. “And unfortunately, I've seen a lot of the evil and ugliness of this world. Force Blue allows you to see the beauty and the joy and the love in this world.”
"I've seen a lot of the evil and ugliness of this world. Force Blue allows you to see the beauty and the joy and the love in this world.”
Steve “Gonzo” Gonzalez, former Navy SEAL
He was working for another nonprofit when he received a phone call saying the NFL was looking to complete a green initiative project in Miami ahead of the Super Bowl in 2020.
Gonzalez knew of the ideal squadron for such a mission. He recommended Force Blue, then a startup organization that had recently trained on marine conservation in the Cayman Islands and restored damaged coral in the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico. A pivotal relationship was established not only between Gonzalez and Force Blue, but between Force Blue and the NFL.
The relationship began with the project at the Super Bowl in Miami now known as “100 Yards of Hope.”
NFL Green, the league’s environmental program, wanted to combat the environmental devastation threatening Florida’s coral reef by planting 100 climate resilient coral in honor of the NFL’s 100th anniversary that year. Force Blue was paired with scientists to complete the task, with divers marking the 10-yard lines of a football field-sized restoration plot.
“Engaging special ops military veterans in a Super Bowl community project took our community legacy initiative to a new level,” said Susan Groh, associate director of NFL Green. “Watching those veterans work side by side with scientists to save a coral reef was beyond inspiring. So was talking to them about what it meant to engage around this project.”
That particular project went on to span two Super Bowls, continuing with the following year’s game in 2021 being held in Tampa. The second year, the reef was filled with thousands of climate resilient corals, making the football field-sized project a “hope site” for others working to save coral reefs.
And for the veterans who helped create that hope.
"On that dive, it was the first time I'd ever dove in the open water in the day on scuba,” Gonzalez said. “It was, I use the term transcendent … I got to see colors. I got to see marine life. I got to, just really experience the joy, the wonder and the beauty of the ocean. For the first time, really.”
‘We owe the NFL everything’
NFL Green and Force Blue continued to collaborate on Super Bowl projects in the years that followed.
At Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles, they restored a kelp forest. For Super Bowl LVII in Arizona, they revitalized a section of the lower Salt River by removing highly destructive invasive apple snails and their egg clusters. At Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, they installed a living reef made of 50 tons of oyster shells to slow land loss.
The members of Force Blue impressed Groh with “their dedication and commitment to healing the environment and helping each other,” she said. “These military divers have tremendous skills, and they are repurposing those skills to help save and protect our oceans and waterways.”
Partnering with NFL Green helped put Force Blue on the map — which, of course, is covered mostly by water.
“Watching those veterans work side by side with scientists to save a coral reef was beyond inspiring. So was talking to them about what it meant to engage around this project.”
Susan Groh, NFL Green associate director
“We owe the NFL everything, we really do,” said Ritterhoff. “They have been big believers in us when it would have been easy to not be ... They had enough confidence in us and belief to take that work into the water, to become sort of NFL Blue, if you will.”
Ritterhoff said Force Blue’s credibility with the NFL helped lead to other crucial partnerships with Pepsi, Luminous Watches, Publix, Mars Inc. and other supporters at a time when federal funding is difficult to come by.
“Force Blue is in a really great position to go out and attract those private sector partners who maybe absolutely want to do good by the environment,” he said, “but they're also really drawn to the story of helping veterans continue to serve and putting individuals like Gonzo back to work for the good of the planet.”
‘It’s all family’
When Roger Sparks was first asked to become a member of Force Blue, he insisted that others would have to join him. Not veterans, scientists or scuba divers, but his family.
“I knew in my heart that for me to heal from my experiences, I had to involve my family,” he said. “Because those experiences that I experienced in the military really drove me distant from them, and I wanted to have very powerful experiences with them to kind of reunite those bonds.”
The experiences they went on to share through Force Blue particularly strengthened his bond with his youngest son Oz, who has non-verbal cerebral palsy.
Oz, just a child when he first started with Force Blue, is now 21 years old and an accomplished scuba diver.
“Many consider my son to be kind of the spirit animal of Force Blue,” Sparks said.
The Sparks became one of the founding families of the group, establishing a family atmosphere that continued to grow with Force Blue’s creation of the Ocean Conservation School. Members host a five-day marine conversation training program for children of Gold Star families whose father or mother died while serving their nation in the military.
“We are training you to become the next generation of ocean conservation leaders,” Ritterhoff said. “So, it feels a little bit like a boot camp with a little bit of marine conservation training and a whole lot of scuba training.”
For Sparks, seeing his son, and many other families, discover a new passion has added to his healing process.
“It’s an affirmation that my life has purpose, that it has value,” Sparks said. “And that we belong to this very beautiful group of people.”
The core of which includes veterans and ocean conservationists, two groups from different pasts who are forever linked by the water and a shared vision for the future.
“We're all very mission-oriented people and we're not afraid to work really long, hard, arduous days, and there's a lot of passion that drives both of those groups. So, we found a lot of commonalities,” Sparks said. “It's all family. I can't think of my future without the experiences and the family that we've created with Force Blue.”
