Headquartered in Mt. Pleasant and launched in 2016 by I’On resident Jim Ritterhoff, Recon Marine veteran Rudy Reyes and SCUBA industry leader Keith Sahm, veterans nonprofit FORCE BLUE uses one banner to address two seemingly unrelated issues— the rapidly declining health of our marine resources and the difficulty far too many service men and women have in adjusting to civilian life once their service ends.

By retraining and redeploying military-trained combat divers from all branches of service to assist scientists and environmentalists in marine conservation work, FORCE BLUE has created a model of caring, cooperation, and positive change with the ability to restore not only marine ecosystems, but also the lives of its veterans as well.

“We like to think of it as the ultimate win-win,” said Ritterhoff, who currently serves as

the organization’s Executive Director. “Not only are we giving an overworked, understaffed marine scientific community access to the best, most highly-skilled divers and maritime operators anywhere in the

world, but we’re giving those same operators a tangible way to continue serving something greater than themselves — a path toward rediscovering that sense of mission and purpose they had in the military, which can be tough to find in the civilian world.”

Since its inception, FORCE BLUE has provided scientific diver training to dozens of Special Operations veterans. Those veterans have, in turn, deployed beneath the FORCE BLUE flag on over 100 impact missions involving everything from coral restoration and invasive species eradication to living shoreline installation and marine debris removal, both in the U.S. and around the globe.

In addition to scientific partners like the University of Miami, Mote Marine, and the Guy

Harvey Foundation, FORCE BLUE has also garnered the support of an incredible array

of private sector partners, including the National Football League, National Hockey League, Boeing, Pepsi, Luminox Watches, and Publix Supermarkets. Here in the Low Country, this spring FORCE BLUE completed a week-long mission to Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Savannah, GA, as part of its

“Tour of Duty” is a multi-year commitment the organization has made to visit all 18 of the country’s national marine sanctuaries and educate the public about their importance.

More recently, FORCE BLUE veterans partnered with the South Carolina Aquarium in its efforts to build and deploy artificial “reef balls” off the Charleston coast to help create new habitat and remove the stressors from existing fisheries. “Basically, anywhere there’s water and there’s a need, we can deploy a team of FORCE

BLUE veterans to assist,” said Ritterhoff. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, there’s no shortage of either.”

If you believe in FORCE BLUE’s mission and would like to play a part in its success, please visit www.forceblueteam.org and consider making a tax- deductible donation.