Thalassophiles – lovers of the sea – took a deep dive recently during An Explorer Experience, a special event at Triton Submarines in Sebastian to benefit the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, founded in 2005 by Edie Widder, Ph.D.

Guests mingled among state-of-the-art submersibles while enjoying locally-sourced cuisine and glow-in-the-dark cocktails as they chatted with ORCA staff about the work being done to protect our waters – second only to air as the world’s most critical natural resource.

Widder, an internationally renowned, deep-sea explorer and bioluminescence guru, founded the nonprofit to explore new ways to protect the ocean and, in our own backyard, the Indian River Lagoon. ORCA, “the nation’s first technology-based marine conservation organization,” collects data to determine water quality and its impact on marine ecosystems.

“Edie Widder is an ocean advocate, but she’s also a kindred spirit; somebody who loves the ocean like I do,” said Patrick Lahey, president of Triton Submarines. “The things that she has done in her career are nothing short of remarkable. We’re very proud to be supporting her in her effort to raise funding for the ORCA organization. Edie is the closest thing we get to a rock star in the ocean community. She’s been involved in some pretty incredible things in her lifetime, and we’re very fortunate to have somebody like her, who is as passionate and as dedicated to the ocean and raising awareness for it as she is.”

“I’ve spent my life as a deep-sea explorer, diving in submersibles,” said Widder. “In fact, it was one of the Triton submarines that I used off Japan in 2012, when we got the first footage of a giant squid filmed in its natural habitat.”

Widder was also able to get footage of a giant squid last summer in American waters; it was just the second time a giant squid has been captured on film. She said she had been amazed at the enormity of the creatures, which most people didn’t even know existed.

“It can grow as tall as a four-story building and you’ve never seen them,” said Widder. “We’ve barely begun to explore our ocean, which is basically our whole planet. I was very distressed to think that we were actually destroying the ocean before we even know what’s in it. That was my motivation for starting ORCA in 2005.”

With a tagline of ‘Mapping pollution, finding solutions,’ ORCA is currently exploring ways to halt the deterioration of the Indian River Lagoon.

“The lagoon is an incredibly precious estuary,” said Widder. “Estuaries are a tiny fraction of the ocean as a whole, but they have an outsized impact because so many open-ocean animals spend some portion of their lifecycle, usually spawning, in the estuary. To have this estuary collapsing is not acceptable.”

Footage of the deep-sea creatures she has photographed ran in the background as guests visited informational booths to learn about the methods ORCA is using to explore and protect the lagoon. In a darkroom tent, people were able to create their own works of art via light paintings – waving wands of light in the dark that were captured digitally, enabling artists to imitate the illusion of what certain deep-sea marine life see in the ocean’s depths.

A variety of ocean-themed items were offered in the silent auction, including a Dragonfly paddleboard and a highly-sought-after dive in a Triton 3K3 submersible in the Bahamas with Allen Exploration.

For more information, visit teamorca.org.