The Invading Sea was founded as a collaboration between the editorial boards of The Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post and Miami Herald, with Miami-based public radio station WLRN serving as a news partner. Rosemary O’Hara, then opinion page editor of The Sun Sentinel, proposed the idea and coaxed her husband, Tom O’Hara, a veteran newspaper editor, to edit the site.
The Invading Sea was unique at the time because news organizations that normally competed not only agreed to share opinion content, but to coordinate the publication of editorials. The Invading Sea won the Burl Osborne Award for Editorial Leadership, a national honor awarded annually by the News Leaders Association, along with other state and national awards. Its media partners eventually expanded to include more than 25 newspapers across Florida.
After Rosemary O’Hara retired from The Sun Sentinel in 2021, she joined her husband in editing the site. The couple later decided it was time to retire from editing the site and donated it to Florida Atlantic University. FAU hosted the site from March 2023 to June 2026.