Snorkelers playing saxophones? Stranger things have happened.
Every year at the Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival, local musicians and divers gather for a “subaquatic sound experience.”
When Bill Becker — the news director of local radio station WWUS 104.1 — founded the festival in 1985, his goal was to raise awareness for coral preservation.
The annual event brings people to Looe Key Reef, part of the only living coral barrier reef in North America, to learn more about coral reefs and enjoy them in a whole new light.
Attendees can engage with a pre-selected radio playlist, which is streamed live from underwater speakers and includes hits like “Yellow Submarine” or Jimmy Buffett’s “Fins.”
Musician-divers and “mermaids” also play whimsical instruments created by a local artist that create an ethereal sound experience for underwater participants.
And of course, Becker’s dream is at the center of it all: protecting reefs. The event brings some much-appreciated traffic to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and attendees get to learn more about responsible diving, as well as ways to protect the reef.
“We have the largest living coral reef in the Northern Hemisphere, and we want to bring attention to it and some of the stresses that it faces and just to point out that it's there and needs our care,” Steve Miller, executive director of the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce, told CBS News.
The music festival also includes free tours of Mote Marine Laboratory's Coral Reef Research Center, where ocean lovers saw the work being done to protect and rebuild the Florida Keys coral reef ecosystem.
“The underwater music festival is a way to celebrate the coral reef, and we celebrate it by looking for a balance between protection of the reef and public enjoyment,” Becker told ABC-7 News.
“The more people realize what's down there and enjoy it, the more likely they are to protect it.”
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A version of this article was originally published in The 2024 Music Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image courtesy of Visit Florida Keys
