Working closely with local marine archaeologists, DWP has been hunting for it since the group formed in 2004. The same can be said for Diving with a Purpose’s primary mission: finding the Guerrero, the notorious pirate slave ship that wrecked on a reef somewhere nearby in 1827. “It can get to be depressing to continue to engage in this work,” he later tells me, but someone has to document the condition over time so that we can see how far and how fast we're moving backward.”ĭiving With a Purpose co-founder Ken Stewart.
The striking absence of pencil urchins, trumpet tritons, and other key indicators leaves Wimberley feeling both dejected and determined. His purpose today is to collect data on the sea life that denotes a healthy ecosystem. As he swims past me, I see that he has the word the painted under one flipper, and man on the other. A fifty-eight-year-old retired firefighter from New Jersey, Wimberley leads a reef preservation program for a volunteer group of Black scuba divers called Diving with a Purpose, or DWP. That’s why Wimberley and eleven other divers are braving the unseasonably cool waters this January morning. Without action, the once pristine reef, like the others along the Keys, is in danger of being lost and forgotten. Marine life here at Molasses Reef, located five miles southeast of Key Largo, is dying from rising temperatures, pollution, and disease. Then he slices his hand across his throat, dead.
Thirty feet under the choppy blue waves of the Florida Keys, Kramer Wimberley points to the broken, bleached white coral scattered beneath us like bones.
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