Dr. Justin Dunnavant
The Devils Gap pupfish is the rarest fish on the planet, with fewer than 200 on the planet. Although the stats usually are not fairly as stark, Black girls divers are additionally a rarity. Greater than 85 p.c of professional divers within the U.S. are males, 63 p.c of all divers are white, and 9 p.c Black, in keeping with Zippia.
Regardless of these small numbers, Black girls are making their mark in organizations like Diving With a Objective, based by Ken Stewart in 2003 to offer schooling, coaching, certification, and subject expertise to adults and youth in maritime archaeology and ocean conservation. DWP focuses on the safety, documentation and interpretation of African slave commerce shipwrecks and the maritime historical past and tradition of African People.
Ayana Omilade Flewellen, PhD., Rebecca Hunter, and Shirikiana Gerima are aqua adventurers who dive with DWP and volunteer as mentors and instructors with the group, shared tales of how they got here to diving, their experiences diving around the globe, looking for slave wrecks, educating the subsequent technology and extra.
Flewellen is an assistant professor at Stanford College’s Division of Anthropology and a marine archaeologist, one among about 20 Black girls within the U.S. with this certification. The 32-year-old has been a diver since 2016. She was impressed by a DWP board member she met at a convention who was searching for Black archaeologists to study maritime archaeology. “Listening to concerning the mission of DWP opened my thoughts to the likelihood. Earlier than that assembly, I by no means imagined I'd grow to be a diver or do underwater archaeological work. As soon as I used to be within the water, there was no approach of getting me out. I used to be hooked,” Flewellen says.
Rebecca Hunter.
Matthew Lawrence
To do underwater analysis it's essential to receive a Scientific SCUBA Driving certification by means of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences, a course of that may take 6-12 months. “We study a lot throughout our certification, together with the historical past of diving, rules, human physiology underwater, elementary chemistry for gasoline compositions in addition to underwater navigation.”
Flewellen’s come a great distance from that lady attempting to swim throughout summer season camp who almost drowned. (Her mom ended up enrolling her in a free swim program.) Now, Flewellen has dived in St. Croix, St. John, the Crimson Sea in Egypt, and Florida.
“I’ve completed work round ships concerned within the Transatlantic Slave Commerce just like the Clotilda (the final recognized slave ship to reach within the U.S.) undertaking in Cellular, Alabama. It was a tremendous expertise to dive on a vessel recognized to have carried enslaved Africans throughout the Atlantic. It is usually the one ship discovered so far that has probably the most intact hull the place enslaved Africans have been held. Emotional doesn’t even start to articulate what that have was like. To really contact the wooden of that vessel, to have the ability to maintain fragments of that historical past… I truly don’t have phrases for it, only a deep reverence.”
She has by no means encountered hazard whereas diving, “However one time whereas doing a coral survey in Key Biscayne an enormous white manta ray swam proper up beside me and was like, ‘What are you doing right here?’. It scared the life out of me! The ocean is stuffed with life, they're as interested by us as we're about them.”
What’s troubling, she says, is “within the twenty first century we're nonetheless coping with ‘firsts’. In 2008 Grace Turner was the primary Black girl to get a masters in maritime archaeology. The sphere is inaccessible for many people, when it comes to illustration, value, and academic obtainment. Till lately there have been no inside drives from throughout the self-discipline to shift that. DWP has modified that.”
She’s optimistic although. “There are limitations like the price of coaching, the price of tools and for schooling subject faculties for college kids, however Black girls are making strides, just by displaying up and carving out our personal paths and guaranteeing that these pathways are sustainable for individuals who come after us.”
The reality is, it’s not solely these points. Black folks have a historical past with water, coming to this nation through ships, being dumped in rivers—there's actual trauma. “Black People didn’t at all times have entry to public swimming pools and seashores which I'd argue left generational scars in regard to our relationship to water,” she says.
However the rewards are big for taking to the water. “I gained a new-found sense of how interconnected every little thing is.”
What’s her phrase to different Black girls? “The water is looking. There's a complete different world to expertise.”
Rebecca Hunter was a snorkeler, who whereas on trip in Mexico greater than 20 years in the past was inspired by a buddy to attempt scuba. She took an introductory course, they usually did a shallow dive. She would go on to get her certification in 1998. She’s retired and at 61, spends her time between California and Florida. She’s been diving for 25 years in faraway locales similar to Indonesia, the Maldives, Fiji, Egypt, Tahiti, and Australia.
It didn’t come simple at first.
“I needed to get out of my very own head. I skilled an excessive amount of nervousness. It could generally hit me that there was an enormous quantity of water between me and the floor. I realized to calm myself by touching one other individual to heart myself and I additionally tried underwater pictures to focus my consideration on discovering one thing to photograph,” says Hunter, who volunteers with the DWP Maritime Archaeology Program and the DWP Cares Coral Program as an teacher and mentor. She is a lifetime member of the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Scuba Divers.
“I had at all times hoped to stand up near whales, sharks, dolphins and I've,” she says however she will get as a lot pleasure peering into holes and crevices for small creatures and watching the ocean life exist and co-exist in its pure surroundings. “Though there’s a number of exercise down there, the ocean can be a really peaceable place the place the one sound you hear is our personal respiratory. It’s stunning.”
There’s magnificence under, however above on the boat, there may be challenges. “I used to be the one Black girl on a dive boat. Evidently, there was not a lot enthusiasm when everybody else realized that somebody would should be my dive buddy. However I feel extra persons are turning into conscious of the truth that we're right here. Black girls are getting extra publicity due to the local weather within the nation and world that has compelled some to acknowledge our presence and qualifications.”
Shirikiana Gerima is psyched to return to the hunt for the slave ship Guerrero shipwreck in July. After 20 years of looking out, the DWP and Biscayne Nationwide Park are partnering to go for what often is the remaining mission after 20 years of looking out in these waters for it. “I'm so excited!” she confesses. “Now we have been attempting to make a constructive identification for years. We’re getting shut.”
Gerima is a licensed dive grasp, scientific diver, and DWP teacher, and is engaged on turning into a diving teacher. She’s been diving since 2013. “I like diving, significantly because it pertains to discovering methods to make the world a greater place,” says the 67-year-old filmmaker and co-founder of Sankofa Video and Books & Café in Washington, D.C. “That is what my work in movie and my bookstore has at all times sought to do and now, extending this work into the oceans has been fantastic.”
She was doing laps in a swimming pool in Washington, D.C. together with her daughter when she noticed some Black divers coaching within the pool, and requested them how she would possibly grow to be one, too. Nowadays she’s coaching younger folks in marine archaeology advocacy by means of DWP, and dealing with organizations on coral conservation.
Gerima was a part of the crew in 2015 scouring the waters of Biscayne Nationwide Park in Florida for the Guerrero. “It’s emotional and slightly eerie, however on the similar time I really feel like I've a mission to uncover historical past, to not waste my time on the planet. Discovery is vital. You concentrate on how lengthy these souls have been questioning when somebody was coming for them. It’s non secular. I would like them to know that we’re attempting to know what they went by means of and grateful for his or her bravery.”
Defending cultural heritage within the ocean is top-of-mind. “We don’t need these websites to be destroyed and looted, however to protect historical past to see what may be realized.”