A few years ago National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts @curvypath_tara made a decision that changed the course of her life. Inspired by a photograph of black women scuba divers and the Slave Wrecks Project (Divers With A Purpose) at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, she resigned from her job as a communications director to travel the world with DWP locating and documenting the remnants of slave ships and “work to tell a more inclusive history of the slave trade.” Over the past year, I had the honor of working with Tara and @natgeo to magnify the amazing work that Divers With A Purpose continues to do. I met the coolest black archaeologists Justin Dunnavant @archfieldnotes and Ayana Flewellen @illegible_musings, retired engineer Kamau Sadiki, Phd student Jewell Humphrey @jewell116, businessmen Jay Haigler @jayhaigler3445 and Kramer Wimberley and other great people, like Maria Suarez Toro in Costa Rica. We started at fresh water quarries in the US where divers train, then to the Florida Keys, and up the Mobile river where the last known slave ship the Clotilde has been found, then to AfricaTown and the Old Plateau cemetery, where descendants of the Clotilde slaves rest. This was also the first time that I traveled outside of the US (Coral Bay, St. John and Cahuita, Costa Rica) for @natgeo and my first cover for the flagship magazine. You can bare witness to Tara’s journey in a six-part podcast entitled Into the Depths which is live now!!! This is one for the history books and one that I’ll savor for a long time. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen. A huge thank you to Tara Roberts and everyone I met from DWP who treated me as if I was family. National Geographic Editor in Chief, Susan Goldberg National Geographic director of visuals and Immersive experiences, Whitney Johnson National Geographic Executive editor, Culture: Debra Adams Simmons Photo Editor: David Barreda Photo assistants: Dorthy Ray @dorthyray, Shawn McCarney- Alviz @shawnmccarney, Brother Junior @brotherjunior, his wife Lea Bernard @teachluv and Michelle Garcia @mishgarcia. Agent: @artworld