Diving in Key Largo

THE DIVING

My Florida Keys diving experience had been limited to Key West. So needless to say, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I was thrilled to find abundant fish life and decent coral here in Key Largo. I’m already looking forward to diving there again.

Day 3

Alex wakes up at 5:30am (his usual time)

Room temperature – a chilly 70 degrees.

On the first day, the photography students had class in the AM so I was off to the pool to relax and read my book. After being subsequently attacked by mutant mosquitoes, a quick stop to the Key Largo Shopper yielded me my new scent for the trip – Summer Splash Off.

We arrived on the boat around 12:45pm to get our gear set up. I’ve never seem so much camera equipment in my life! At the first dive site the photography students did an exposure test under the boat and then we were off.

Dive #1

Minnow Caves

Max depth: 24 ft

Bottom temp: 84 degrees

Bottom Time: 34 minutes

Vis: 40 ft.

Water was a little green here. I had gotten some water in my ear midway thru the dive and it bugged me the rest of the time. Couldn’t clear it if my life depended on it. Getting over that, I did see some big angelfish, grunts and goatfish as well as a very well fed parrotfish.

Dive #2

City of Washington

Max depth: 28 ft

Bottom temp: 82 degrees

Bottom Time: 57 minutes

Vis: 40 ft.

It’s a shell of a wreck, but a really nice dive. Vis still wasn’t great, due in no small part to all the rain the east coast had been experiencing. Saw my first yellow-headed jawfish and first of many spotted filefish.

Day 4

Alex wakes up at 5:30am again

Room temperature – still 70 degrees.

For the rest of the week, our dives would be in the morning. We needed to be at the dock at 7:45am. Alex being a creature of habit demands his breakfast at his usual time – 5:30am!!! Where Alex got his usual breakfast, we had the Marina del Mar’s continental breakfast Being that it was a) marginal and b) always out late, I picked up some yogurts and cereal bars at the market to have in the room. At 7:30am, we were off to the dock and our day’s dives!

Dive #3

Fire Coral Caves

Max depth: 24 ft

Bottom temp: 80 degrees

Bottom Time: 65 minutes

Vis: 60 ft.

This site lives up to its name as I somehow managed a nice fire coral sting while looking under a ledge in the sand. The visibility improved today as we saw big spadefish, tarpon and barracuda out in the blue. Michael was shooting fish when I looked up and saw a turtle. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get Michaels attention so I grabbed the nearest photographer and pointed it out. When Michael final realized I was trying to catch his attention, we swam towards the sand channel to get a glimpse of the turtle when a huge spotted Eagle ray flew through!

Dive #4

Snapper Ledge

Max depth: 26 ft

Bottom temp: 80 degrees

Bottom Time: 62 minutes

Vis: 60 ft.

As I dropped down to meet Michael under the boat, he’s snapping away at a scorpionfish hanging out. Saw a lot of butterflyfish here. Also found a sleeping nurse shark and a goldentail eel retreating into a hole in the coral.

Day 5

Alex sleeps in to 6am today

Room temp still 70! We gotta do something about this!!!

I didn’t catch the exact name of the site for the next dive, but:

Dive #5

Deep end of Molasses Reef

Max depth: 60 ft

Bottom temp: 81 degrees

Bottom Time: 43 minutes

Vis: 50 ft.

Michael was shooting macro and I failed to find any decent little creatures! We had a bit of a current so I wanted to keep an idea of where the boat was in relation to the current. Of course when it was time to return, my rusty navigation skills over shot the boat a bit, but at least we were up current making our return to the boat quite easy. I saw the usual grunts, butterflyfish, parrotfish and hogfish.

Dive #6

Benwood Wreck

Max depth: 40 ft

Bottom temp: 81 degrees

Bottom Time: 61 minutes

Vis: 40 ft. to less

Wreck is low lying and broken up. It is a really neat dive. The visibility decreased during the course of the dive as another boat arrived with many buoyancy-challenged divers.

My critter finding ability was a bit better on this dive as I was able to spot a bristle worm and a fire worm, a couple of arrow crabs and a flamingo’s tongue. Did see a pretty huge puffer and a beautiful hogfish (a Spanish hogfish perhaps) as well.

Day 6

Old habits die-hard as Alex is back to the 5:30am wake-up.

Room temp 72. We changed the temperature in the middle of the night.

Today was going to be a long day as we were doing a night dive tonight.

Dive #7

North North Dry Rocks

Max depth: 29 ft

Bottom temp: 82 degrees

Bottom Time: 70 minutes

Vis: 50 ft.

This is a really neat reef system. It’s on the inner reef and the coral extends out like fingers. Lots of places for fish to live and play. There are a lot of colorful corals, tubes and fans here as well. I really loved this site. Highlights of this dive included a striped burrfish, 2 spotted filefish, hogfish and in addition to the myriad of parrotfish, a striking midnight parrotfish.

Dive #8

City of Washington

Max depth: 28 ft

Bottom temp: 80 degrees

Bottom Time: 30 minutes

Vis: 30 ft.

This was the type of dive geared towards the photographic opportunity. My body temp does not allow me to simply hang out – I need to keep moving to keep warm underwater. So after 30 minutes, I called it a dive. I did see several large grouper, a couple of nurse sharks and my first Jewfish. After warming up on conch chowder and a nice afternoon nap, I was ready for the night dive. Michael would be shooting macro so I had to be ready to find little critters. I’d also get the chance to try out my new hand held UK HID light. I loved it, but I’m not so sure the fish did!

Dive #9

Eagle Ray Alley

Max depth: 33 ft

Bottom temp: 80 degrees

Bottom Time: 69 minutes

Vis: 40 ft.

Found loads of coral shrimp, fireworms, arrow crabs and corkscrew anemones. The lobsters were all out and about. At one point, Michael was shooting shrimp when a free swimming moray eel being chased by a camera wielding diver came by and swam right through Michael’s legs! A little excitement to say the least!!!

Day 7

By now I’ve resigned myself to the fact that Alex wants to eat at 5:30. I made my life easier by having his food already so as soon as he woke up, I’d give it to him and get at least another hour or so of sleep. We also decided that 72 was a temperature we could all live with.

Dive #10

Spiegel Grove

Max depth: 94 ft

Bottom temp: 81 degrees

Bottom Time: 31 minutes

Vis: 60 ft.

The surface was a bit choppy today but no current! It took some of the divers a while to swim the granny line to the mooring line. As a result, we sucked a bit of air on the surface. At the mooring line we began our decent. Everyone was still going slowly. At around 50 ft, after making sure there was no current to speak of, we free swam the remainder of the way and made it to the bow.

This wreck is really impressive. I especially like the fact that its on its side. Kind of gives you a feel that it’s a “real” wreck. It’s starting to get growth but not a whole lot. My guess is that in a couple of years it’s going to be an absolutely spectacular dive. It’s got residents too. We saw parrotfish and grunts (they do seem to be everywhere don’t they?), surgeonfish and trumpetfish. On the deck there is an American Flag (someone brought it down? Was there when it sank? Not sure). One of the first divers down unfurled it, so when we saw it, it was untwisted and flying high in the now picking up current. It really was neat to see it there.

At depth, I noticed a little water in my regulator. Strange, but when I purged it, the problem went away. Maybe the mouthpiece was loose or something. As we ascended, the current picked up a bit and we were flapping around a little on our safety stop.

Dive #11

North North Dry Rocks

Max depth: 22 ft

Bottom temp: 81 degrees

Bottom Time: 63 minutes

Vis: 50 ft.

Well, since we weren’t doing a second dive on the SG, this was good enough. As I said before, I really loved this reef. This dive I finally saw a cowfish (one of my personal favorites, they’re really cute). We also saw the usual grunts, wrasses, sergeant majors, angelfish and barracuda. Actually, I’m noticing more and more barracuda! They totally unnerve me.

Day 8

We’ve got a routine and a temperature we can all live with. Alex is really enjoying the change in scenery and being in a different place. He likes being on vacation, though everyday is a vacation for him!

Dive #12

Winch Hole

Max depth: 41 ft

Bottom temp: 79 degrees

Bottom Time: 72 minutes

Vis: 60 ft.

A large winch from an old sunken sailboat marks the site. Makes for a good landmark when you spend half your dive chasing a spotted eagle ray. This guy make a good 4-5 passes too. At one point Michael was chasing him and he sailed straight over MY head!!! ME! The one without the camera!!! DiveMaster John ended up getting some really nice shots of him. The other cool thing on this dive was a school of midnight parrotfish. There were easily 20 of them all swimming along in a row. It was very cool to see. At the end of my dive, under the boat, spotted a couple of lobster. Why can’t I find them so easily here at home?

Dive #13

Benwood Wreck

Max depth: 38 ft

Bottom temp: 80 degrees

Bottom Time: 64 minutes

Vis: 60 ft.

Saw two balloonfish off the wreck. Michael found a spotted drum. There were a couple of cleaning stations here. I’ve never observed this before. I saw a parrotfish lying on its side with its mouth open. My first thought was that it was dead. Upon closer inspection I saw about 4 cleaner shrimp doing their job! I looked around and saw another station with a grunt getting cleaned. Pretty neat stuff! We swam around to the stern of the wreck and came face to face with a BIG grouper. Michael got a few shots of him before he retreated back into the wrecked hull.

That night, Stephen Frink threw a party where all of the students showed their 10 best shots of the week. As I said before, some of the shots were truly amazing. I really enjoyed the first part of the trip. We still had one more day to go in Key Largo and we made the decision we were going to spend the next few days in the Lower Keys. I called my cousin, who LOVES Sugarloaf Key and he recommended the Sugarloaf Lodge. A call to the Lodge found them pet-friendly (which we knew) and with availability!!! Ah, but we had one more dive in Key Largo – a night dive with some D2Ders on the Duane.

Day 9

Did some sightseeing around Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada. Got us ready for the night dive on the Duane. We met Marriard, SoFlaRoger, GlenDivesAlot, Kidsdream and forgive me – two others who’s names I cannot recall L!!! At Divers City in Tavernier. We boarded the Diversity bumped along to the Duane.

Dive #14

USCG Duane

Max depth: 101 ft

Bottom temp: 81 degrees

Bottom Time: 34 minutes

Vis: 50-60 ft.

No current really to speak of. I was the third diver down the mooring line. While waiting for Michael I saw a free swimming goldentail eel high tail his skinny butt into a pipe, turn himself around and stick his head out, checking to see if the coast is clear. The sizes of the parrotfish on the wreck were HUGE. I’ve never seen your basic parrotfish the size of a small child! When Michael descended, we began to explore the wreck. I’ve never dove the Duane during the day but it is stunning at night. Its completely covered in orange cup coral. Not all of it was opened yet, but it was still beautiful. Around midship, Michael got my attention and there’s a hawksbill turtle just hanging out.

I was careful not to shine my HID light directly in his eyes but I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. He was huge and he was beautiful and he tolerated us hanging out and looking at him. It was around this time I noticed water in my regulator again. Purging did nothing this time and it was only getting worse. Not exactly what I want to be happening at 100 or so feet. I switched over to my pony and signaled to Michael it was time to go up. We were near the radar tower and were hoping there was a mooring line there. No such luck so we made our free ascent + a 5 minute safety stop. As there was very little current, we didn’t drift to far from the stern of the wreck and the Diversity picked us up within minutes of our surfacing. Turned out the diaphragm in my regulator curled up on the end, kind of like a contact lens, letting in water. I was upset that I missed the rest of the dive, I hear there was an octopus over by the stern, but I was happy the way Michael & I were able to handle a potentially bad situation.

We said our goodbyes and went back to the Marina del Mar – getting our gear to dry as much as we could and our stuff packed for our trip to Sugarloaf Key.

Key Largo Dining

As I mentioned before, the Marina del Mar had a continental breakfast. Since we had to be at the dock before they generally had it out, we got our own breakfast stuff. The rooms are equipped with decent sized refrigerators, so we not only stocked up on breakfast supplies but lunch stuff as well.

After we checked in on Saturday and stopped by Frink Photo to check in there. We hadn’t had lunch yet and Liz recommended the Marlin, a Cuban restaurant next door. After having a couple of much needed Cuban Coffees we split a Cuban sandwich and a couple of beers. Great food and very inexpensive. That night we had dinner at the restaurant at the hotel, Coconuts. A little on the pricey side but the food was really good. We enjoyed the catch of the day, Mahi.

Sunday night we went out with DiveMaster John, BowCandy and a bunch of other people from the class to Hobo’s. The food there is great and inexpensive as well. Many of us enjoyed the catch of the day (Mahi again) and we all split a giant dessert with peaches and ice cream.

Monday night we just had a pasta craving that had to be put to rest. We found the Largo Café. The pasta was pretty good and the portions were pretty big. Tuesday was back at Hobo’s for BBQ night. For $9.95 you chose two meats from pulled pork, shredded beef, ribs and chicken. It came with corn on the cob and coleslaw. That and a piece of Key Lime Pie and we were good to go.

Wednesday night was the night dive so we ordered blackened fish sandwiches and conch chowder from Coconuts. The fish? You guessed it, Mahi. Thursday night we tried Snook’s by the Bay. Again, another good meal. This was probably the most expensive place we went to and it wasn’t really that bad. I broke my mahi trend and had grouper. Then I felt guilty about it the next day when we saw the big guy on the Benwood.