While on our honeymoon in May of 1998, Christi and I discovered the awesome pastime of
SCUBA diving. After a week of diving in
Cozumel, Mexico, we were absolutely hooked! We were certified through the
PADI Open Water Diver course that
November, and money and vacation time allowing, we look forward to diving at every opportunity.
There a quite a number of sites on the web which cover the topic of diving, and it seems they all
have a different spin. I decided to create a page with links to pages that I found particularly useful
or fun. If you know of something that fits in here, please let me
know and I will add it for future visitors.
Although our diving experiences are limited, we have a short list of places to go. On Cozumel, our
favorite dive shop was Deep Blue. They were amazing! We pretty much went to all of the dive locations
of Cozumel except the advanced ones.
For Southeastern US, we found that Destin, Florida was a pretty fun spot, and the people at Emerald
Coast SCUBA were friendly and helpful. Nothing in Destin compares to the reefs of Cozumel, but once
you get used to SCUBA, it doesn't matter as long as you are underwater.
Another place we've been diving was Crystal Lake, Florida. The water was cold but very clear. Sadly,
the location does not have a large space to swim around, and the day we were there it was pretty
crowded.
Most recently, we've been to the Florida Keys. In addition to snorkeling in the mangroves, we spent
a couple days exploring the Looe Key National
Marine Sanctuary, where we saw rays, grouper, barracuda and quite a few black tip reef sharks. If
you decide to dive in the Keys, do your homework and pick a reputable dive outfit. The two we dove with
were the Looe Key Reef Resort and Strike Zone Charters (no
web site). While Strike Zone was cheaper, they run cattle boats, and we weren't thrilled by their
customer service. One thing to note about the Keys, if you have never been diving before: all the reef
formations are off the coast, so don't expect to find any shore diving.
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