Trip Report Back in Key Largo Diving with Rainbow Reef Dive Center

[CajunDiva]

It's great to be back in Key Largo again! This trip we are house sitting for a dear friend - oh what a hardship We will be here for the month of October and will be making random contributions to this thread.

After arriving on Monday, our plans were to begin diving this Friday with friends who are coming to visit from Seattle. Friends and dive buddies learned we are here and the party began a bit early. We got a message that Rainbow Reef was doing a drift dive on Conch Wall Wednesday afternoon, so of course we were all in!

It was a drift, so after jumping off of the boat "commando style", we swam a minute to get to the wall. Once we arrived, I was incredibly happy to see numerous beautiful barrel sponges that still looked great. The supreme summer heat has not been kind in the south, so I had my concerns. While the effects of the above average heat are obvious, I'm happy to see that some of our ocean life is hardy and hanging in there. I'm a huge fan of reefs and sponges in particular, so seeing the barrel sponges was a big positive for me.

Our second dive was at Snapper Ledge. While it's FRESH on my mind, I will share with whoever is interested - on our dive the Captain announced at 2:49 pm that we are following a schedule, so we should plan to be back on the boat at 4:00 pm to head back in for happy hour. So those of you who have heard otherwise, the time limit with Rainbow Reef is very reasonable.

We had a GREAT couple of dives and are enjoying very much catching up with our local friends. We'll be diving with friends who flew in to meet us for the next few days, so I'll report back as able. It's great to be back in Key Largo!

 

[Rob9876]

There for a month -- very nice! Is there some decent shore diving on or close to Key Largo, or is it all boat diving?

 

[FF / EMT]

There for a month -- very nice! Is there some decent shore diving on or close to Key Largo, or is it all boat diving?

It’s all boat diving

 

[CajunDiva]

@Rob9876 as far as I know there is not much in the way of shore diving here. But the wreck diving is prolific and the fish life is supreme! Just gotta find your favorite dive operator and go for it

 

[CajunDiva]

I have been remiss in continuing my trip report...I'm working on it! So far our stay has been fast-moving and hectic, yet incredibly rewarding! Suffice it to say that yesterday was my best dive ever in Key Largo

The winds are currently picking up and blowing like crazy. No diving tomorrow for the poster child of seasickness, so I'll do my best to sit down and compose a full report!

 

[CajunDiva]

The first week of our stay was spent with our friends/clients from Seattle who flew in for a long overdue visit and 8 great dives. We let them set the schedule and choose the dive sites, which worked out perfectly for us. As we are aging and not feeling we have much to prove, diving the shallow sites and seeing more fish life has become our "normal" mode. We've enjoyed many dives on the Spiegel Grove and Duane, but this time we're just chilling

We dove four days straight - Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Dive sites included Eagle Ray Alley, The Aquarium, Benwood Wreck, French Twist and Fire Coral Cave. As always, I was impressed by the sheer volume of fish life here. There were so many fish and quite a variety of them. We saw several green moray eels, large schools of midnight parrot fish, creole wrasse and of course different varieties of snapper. In the mix was a beautiful green sea turtle! I was able to go really slow and find many of my personal favorites - corkscrew anemone filled with lots of cool creatures inside and around them, such as Pederson Cleaning Shrimp and Banded Coral Shrimp along with the elusive pistol shrimp. While visibility was not great, the water temperature was like a bathtub, making for very comfortable diving conditions.

We took advantage of diving with the guides at Rainbow Reef. We like to get to know the people who work on the boats and have a good time with them. They work so hard and try their hardest to please everyone, which of course is next to impossible We are very low maintenance divers and quite capable of taking care of ourselves. We just hang in the back and let those who are more comfortable following the guide go first, then we're free to slowly follow and find our own stuff.

Our friends from Seattle are planning a dive trip to Grand Cayman with a group of divers in December, so they were wanting to upgrade some of their dive equipment. Rainbow Reef has this thing where you can take your dive wristband to their retail shop and "spin the wheel" to win a prize. They ended up with a couple of really nice discounts! My friend bought an AquaLung Soul BCD with the i3 inflator - it's exactly what I use. Any time you purchase a BCD you get a free dive trip, so between her discount and free dive trip, she made out pretty well. Her husband ended up with an even larger discount, so he purchased a new AquaLung Legend regulator. In addition to his discount, he ALSO got a free dive trip. Somehow in there, Rainbow Reef threw in a couple of free tanks of Nitrox. So our friends scored like bandits and are primed and ready for their big Cayman bash

Personally, I am a reef lover. Although the stress of the reefs is evident, I saw many areas of progress that give me hope. There are organizations down here doing their best to restore and maintain the corals. These organizations are doing great work, but they must rely on volunteers to take the corals they are growing and plant them out on the reef. This is where places like Rainbow Reef Dive Center make a HUGE difference. They are so committed to helping save reefs around the world that they have started the Ocean Conservation Foundation (Ocean Conservation Foundation | Key Largo, Florida Keys) to provide the boats and divers to do this vital work. It's a brilliant idea! I've already signed up for a monthly contribution. It doesn't feel like much, but I want to be a part of saving our reefs in any small way I can. My grandkids are already on board as scuba divers, but I want these reefs around for my great grandkids to enjoy as well!


To be continued...