Florida Panhandle Diving

[Dr. Love]

Hola hola!!! I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for me for operators/locations situated in the Florida panhandle?? I have only dove in the Atlantic coast but I will be in Panama City for Ironman Florida in November but am planning to get there early to have some fun first. I can see that there is some decent wreck diving in the area but wasn't sure if anyone had some firsthand insider information that they could offer me! Muchas gracias!!!

 

[Rob9876]

We have had good experiences in PCB with both Dive Locker and Panama City Diving (PCD also does guided shore dives at the St. Andrews jetties). Be prepared that Gulf diving is usually neither blue water nor great viz, especially the in-shore dives. If you can look past that, there can be interesting things to see. Hotels can be tricky, but for a basic hotel we stayed at the Comfort Inn in Panama City (not Panama City Beach, which is its own town) that was adequate and only about 15 minutes from the marina where many of the PCB boats leave from.

If you have time to go to Pensacola, I'd say the diving there is a little better in-shore, and the Oriskanny can have blue water and good viz (some dive ops might require Nitrox and/or AOW for the Oriskanny) -- it's also about an hour boat ride each way and a bit pricey.

I've heard some good things about diving in Destin also, but have not been there myself.

Double check with your dive ops as to whether weights are included -- tanks are usually not included in the panhandle, and some dive ops require you to either bring weights or rent weights (and weight belts) from them - call, don't rely on the web sites either way. Also, if the Gulf weather is not cooperating there are some springs that you can dive in not too far away.

 

[soduh]

I have gone with Panama City Dive Center and Panama City Diving for inshore dives and did my open water check out dives along the jetties at St. Andrews State Park. Both operations were comparable, if you are renting equipment I would recommend PCD as their gear was newer and came with an SMB and a puck style computer on the SPG. For the chartered trips both captains seemed very skilled. PCD had a laminated booklet of renderings of the dive sites we went to (though it hadn't been updated since Hurricane Michael tipped the bridge spans over) which I found helpful. PCDC just kind of trusted that everyone was skilled enough and after a decent safety briefing let divers do their own thing. (To be fair we were with some open water students on the PCD dive so I think the instructors were a little more doting for everyone. They definitely didn't pull us out once we were in the water.)

The surface interval on the Panama City Diving trip wasn't as long, and the depth between the 2 sites we visited were pretty similar, so we didn't have a ton of time on the 2nd site before we were at our no-deco limit. If you are nitrox certified I would definitely say that is the way to go since everything is at about 60-70 ft.

Like @Rob9876 said vis is a bit of a crap shoot and depends a lot on how the storm season has gone. Since I am only open water I have only done the inshore dives but I really liked the Red Sea Tug as a dive site. A bunch of life including some Goliath Grouper. Bridge spans I could kind of take or leave at this point.

Hope that helps!

 

[buck3647]

Dove both Pensacola and Destin and found them good all deep dives of 60 feet plus on sunken Liberty ships LOADS of fish