I understand the travel time deal - that is why i am thinking of camping somewhere in the area rather than driving back and forth to Orlando
I am not spending my time and gas money on a 2-3 hour trek each way per day, rather use that for sleeping, even if i am the only one camping any of those nights. Also i am finishing my intro training on that thursday, so in the area.
Not sure how much fish life there is in many of the springs, a few catfish and the like, but certainly for fish watching i would go to Blue Spring (Orange City), Alexander Spring, Rainbow River, maybe even King's Bay over any of the main cave diving springs. I have heard that the formations in some of these caverns are something to be seen. As for depths, whilst they are still up, it might only be 5ft over what it normally is. I will be diving doubles that whole weekend, so on 1/6's (most likely less used on the way out) i would still have over 2000psi in the pair before going back in again whilst you change out tanks!
From past experience at a few springs and other saltier operations over holiday periods, the business seems quite slack compared to a normal weekend - i have even heard it from the owners/operators that this is normally the case, people seem to be doing the family thing. So the diver limit say at Manatee might not be an issue (however only 8 cave divers are allowed in Catfish
at one time within that 35 divers/day limit). I would suggest Manatee as a second day type of place due to you getting back your sealegs as it were - its deep, its dark and so is not as nice as the devils system, also there isnt much cavern to play with, so it might not be a good place to get the feeling back on the first dive.
Other thread on thanksgiving at least gives an idea of what kind of things we were thinking of in that thread.