Kaj Larsen and the Ocean Mission Beyond Military Service
From restoring coral reefs to investing in underwater technology, the former Navy SEAL sees ocean health, economic resilience and national security as deeply connected. His experience offers the marine industry a practical argument for bringing people, science and capital closer together.
Kaj Larsen remembers the moment he cemented a piece of coral onto a reef off Key Biscayne. Fish began gathering around it, giving him an immediate sense that the work mattered. For a man whose life in the water has included military operations, competitive sport and decades of ocean experience, that small act of restoration remains one of his favourite underwater memories.
The significance reaches beyond a satisfying dive. Larsen was working with FORCE BLUE, which brings former Special Operations veterans and military-trained divers into marine conservation. Scientists supplied the knowledge; experienced divers helped carry out the work. The reef gained new coral, while the people planting it found another way to put hard-earned skills into service.
That exchange runs through Larsen’s understanding of the blue economy. A healthy ocean supports livelihoods, recreation and communities. Protecting it requires scientific expertise, capable people and investment that reaches beyond an idea on paper. His route through military service, journalism and technology has shown him how closely those needs are connected, sometimes in places where the consequences of neglect are devastating.
A life shaped by the water
Growing up around Santa Cruz and Capitola on California’s coast, Larsen absorbed a culture in which being competent in the ocean carried meaning. Surfing, junior lifeguarding, ocean rescue and water polo shaped his early life. He recalls his father dipping his toes into the Pacific on his first day alive, a family story that neatly captures the place water would occupy thereafter.
Water polo took him to the US Naval Academy, where other players introduced him to the SEAL community. He entered training in the summer of 2001. The September 11 attacks occurred during the first phase, changing the context of his training and the service that followed. After active-duty deployments, he pursued a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard, wanting to understand and influence decisions whose consequences he had experienced on the ground.
Journalism developed alongside that education. Reporting from conflict zones brought him back to places he had known in uniform, with a different responsibility and a different set of questions. His interest in the ocean remained constant, including when a story about fishing revealed something much larger about governance and security.
Where damaged fisheries become a security concern
In Mogadishu in 2005, Larsen encountered fishermen catching sharks and asked what was happening. He recalls them pointing towards foreign fishing vessels offshore and describing the loss of fish from waters their country lacked the capacity to protect.
For Larsen, the encounter connected the condition of a marine resource to the vulnerability of the people depending on it. He saw depleted fishing opportunities and weak maritime governance as contributing to the conditions in which piracy could develop. His account offers a close-range perspective on a complex security crisis, and a warning about what happens when coastal livelihoods are treated as peripheral to it.
The relevance extends to marine economies far removed from Somalia. Damage to a habitat can travel through a community as lost income, disrupted work and fewer opportunities. Larsen’s experience makes the economic value of ocean health tangible: the people working around the water feel the consequences when the resource beneath their industry deteriorates.
For yachting, that connection deserves attention beyond a sustainability statement. The appeal and operation of a cruising destination depend on the health of the place around it. Water quality, functioning coastal communities and marine ecosystems belong in the same conversation as infrastructure and commercial growth.
Kaj Larsen’s next mission with FORCE BLUE
Larsen describes veterans as strategic assets whose capacity to contribute continues after military service. Through FORCE BLUE, that belief becomes practical work beneath the surface: coral restoration, marine debris removal and support for turtle rescue.
The organisation brings together people comfortable operating underwater with scientists who understand the ecosystems needing attention. Conservation work still requires specialist instruction and scientific direction. Military experience supplies a valuable foundation of discipline, teamwork and underwater competence that can be applied to a different mission.
The 100 Yards of Hope project brought veteran divers together with scientists and conservation partners to restore a football field-length stretch of reef off Key Biscayne. Larsen’s memory of planting coral captures the appeal of work with a visible result. It also points to a practical constraint within restoration: growing coral is only part of the task. Getting it onto a reef takes people, time and coordinated effort.
There is a personal dimension to that shared labour. Larsen speaks about being back in the water with military friends, using familiar skills for something constructive. The experience offers responsibility, camaraderie and a reason to work together again.
“Our veterans are strategic assets to the nation.”
His account resists reducing veterans to the difficulties they may carry home. It recognises their expertise and the contribution they can make. For the marine sector, that is a useful challenge: consider where existing capabilities could meet real operational needs, and create the training and partnerships that make those connections possible.
Underwater technology with a wider purpose
Larsen brings a similar perspective to investment. He describes a venture fund focused on defence technology, with an ambition to broaden access to investment opportunities within the military community. His interest in the sector draws on the environments and operational problems he knows.
One example is autonomous underwater vehicles. Larsen describes attending a demonstration near Annapolis involving a company he advises. The vehicles have military applications, while the ability to gather information underwater also has potential value for reef inspection, infrastructure assessment and environmental research.
The connection is commercially significant. A technology developed to answer one demanding operational need may prove useful to customers elsewhere in the marine industry. Recognising that possibility requires people who understand the different settings in which the equipment might work, and who can turn a promising capability into something reliable and usable.
Larsen imagines a future in which a yacht crew could deploy an underwater vehicle to investigate obstacles ahead of a vessel approaching an unfamiliar port. He presents it as a possibility, rather than an established substitute for navigational practice. The example illustrates why the marine industry should pay attention to developments beyond its immediate market: tools emerging from defence research may eventually help crews understand the water around them.
South Florida’s opportunity depends on connection
South Florida brings several parts of that process into proximity: marine research, an established yachting and service industry, skilled labour and investment capital. Larsen sees the opportunity in making those groups work more closely together. Research produces ideas; investment helps develop them; experienced people turn them into products and services that can operate outside a laboratory.
The Marine Research Hub works across those relationships, connecting research, business and other stakeholders to support Florida’s blue economy. The underlying challenge is practical. Expertise in one field does not automatically reveal a need in another. Researchers need contact with the people who could use their discoveries, while businesses need ways to engage with work that may become commercially useful.
Larsen’s own experience offers a human example. A combat diver can contribute to reef restoration. A journalist’s encounter at a fishing port can inform his understanding of maritime security. An investor familiar with military operations can recognise a civilian application for underwater technology. Each connection depends on looking beyond the boundaries of a job title.
Growth also carries responsibilities. Larsen is direct about the damage dirty water can do to the wider marine economy, and the need for policy and civic involvement to protect a resource everyone uses. The commercial opportunity rests on the continued health of the environment supporting it.
Back on the reef, the value of that approach is easier to see. A scientist’s knowledge and a veteran’s diving skills meet in a piece of coral secured to the seabed. Fish arrive. The task has a purpose, and the people doing it can see the result. Building a blue economy worthy of the name means making more of those connections, then staying accountable for what they deliver.
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The Marine Research Hub of South Florida connects the region’s marine industry, research institutions and wider Blue Economy, creating opportunities for collaboration, innovation and the development of solutions addressing the challenges and opportunities facing our oceans and marine industries.
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