NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PODCAST GOES ‘INTO THE DEPTHS’

Tara Roberts is the host of “Into the Depths,” a six part podcast that follows a group of Black scuba divers as they help identify and search for wrecked slave ships on the ocean floor. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Tara Roberts is the host of “Into the Depths,” a six part podcast that follows a group of Black scuba divers as they help identify and search for wrecked slave ships on the ocean floor. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PODCAST GOES ‘INTO THE
DEPTHS’

By Tia Carol Jones

Tara Roberts loves the water and the ocean, but she had never really thought about diving. Not until she visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and saw a picture of a group of Black women in wetsuits on a boat.

She discovered the women were part of a group called Diving with a Purpose and they search for and help document shipwrecked slave ships around the world. She turned her journey of finding and falling in love with these Black scuba divers into a podcast for National Geographic.

“Into the Depths” is a six-part narrative podcast that debuted on Thursday, Jan. 27, on all streaming platforms. The weekly podcasts follows Roberts and the scuba divers to countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas.

With the series, Roberts is bearing witness to this work of bringing up lost histories from the ocean floor. The show is also acknowledging the estimated 1.8 million souls who were lost in the Middle Passage, and telling the stories of the ships that were wrecked.

“I’m along on this journey with a question in the back of my head, and that question is: How does engaging with this history, or knowing this history make a difference for Black folks, and specifically for me, who is a Black American woman, who is trying to feel a sense of belonging and home on this planet,” she said.

For Roberts, diving is the most peaceful, magical thing someone can do. There is a whole other world in the water, full of life with millions of species. She likened it to what an astronaut might feel like when walking on the moon or being in space. There’s a real sense of purpose, for many divers who are engaged in the work, and a sense of excitement.

“Like wow, I’m down here to do something that could make such a difference, like finding a piece of history that has been missing, that most people don’t know, just makes you feel the intent and purposefulness,” she said.

It is not easy work. There is some skill to looking for pieces from a shipwreck in the ocean, because it is not a still place. Currents are always moving things and things are always  in motion. A person has to be very calm and practice their breathing to stay in place, so you don’t get pushed away from a site, because of the current.

Roberts is oftentimes underwater, with a clipboard, mylar paper, a pencil and measuring tape. These tools help her sketch out what she has found in her section, and she has a diving buddy with her. She described it as peaceful, purposeful, exciting, and really hard work.

Roberts considers herself a novice in this work, while the others have been doing it for decades. She considers them pros. Roberts’ role in this is a storyteller, helping to elevate the story of the divers, but also the history of these slave ships that has been missing. To do that, and to understand what the divers were doing, she had to participate with them and she had to become a part of the work.

Some of Roberts most poignant moments have been talking to divers and descendants and visiting the sites. One site, Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa, meant a lot to her. It helped her understand the power of this work in a way that she never imagined. The ship was found off the coast of Cape Town, it came from Mozambique. The Makua people were believed to be among the 500 who were on the ship. Less than half died in the wreckage, those who survived were recaptured and sold into slavery in South Africa. The team of scuba divers, historians and archaeologists brought word back to Mozambique about what happened to the ship. The descendants of those people decided to have a ceremony, with music and dancing and speeches. During that ceremony, the Chief gave the team a cowrie shell encrusted vessel filled with soil from Mozambique and asked them to go back to the wreck site and distribute the soil across the site. He wanted those ancestors to be able to touch home for the first time in more than 200 years.

Roberts instructor, was one of the people who distributed the soil, it was a moment of healing and completion. There was joy and relief. When Roberts went to Mozambique and met with the Chief, there was a sense of joy, in being able to put the ancestors to rest. When Roberts went to the wreck site in South Africa, she could feel the energy.

“It’s a very turbulent sea, it’s super cold water … it’s not an easy dive. I felt what those Makua’s might have felt on the ship when it went down that night, just how scared they might have felt. My heart went out to them,” she said. “But my heart also felt something else, there was a healing happening. There was this way the people from the present were able to connect with the past and come full circle and I felt that, sitting at the wreck site, just witnessing and being present to it.”

Roberts said she had many of those moments, traveling with the divers, over the course of the year. Roberts will be on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, digitally on Monday, Feb. 7, and on newsstands on Tuesday, Feb. 8.

National Geographic’s documentary, “Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship,” will premiere at 9 p.m. CST on Feb. 7 on National Geographic and stream on Hulu on Feb. 8. Thirty-two of the people from the Clotilda went on to create a community called Africatown, in Alabama. Stories like that are why the work of Diving with a Purpose is so important.

“Finding this history connects more African Americans to their past in a way we didn’t have access before,” she said.

For more information, visit natgeo.com/intothedepths.

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