BioLogic
Contributor
I'm just posting this for others who might search as I did before our trip, looking for recommendations for dive ops in Key Largo.
We did three days of two-tank dives. All were on shallow reefs. Although I hear the deep wrecks are very nice, the shallow dives have short boat rides and only ten to fifteen minutes surface interval between them -- an important point when one of the divers is having seasickness issues. The diving was about as easy as it gets, with mild current and about 50 ft vis and easy navigation. The small boats do buck even in the small (about 3 ft) seas that were common, but still reboarding wasn't bad.
We dove with a different op each day, just to experiment. All were pretty similar: small boats (six to ten max) that weren't crowded (max six, min two divers), shallow reefs (30 to 20 feet was most common), no dive masters, limit of one hour bottom time. The boats had shade and water; all ops had a camera bucket for the boat and a dunk tank where you offload.
Our favorite was Blue Waters. His boat holds six but he took us as a pair. Friendly and easy to work with. He takes off from a kiosk right on the water rather than having a real shop there so I wouldn't have picked him if not for a recommendation I got here; but I'm happy to recommend him to others.
Quiescence and Silent World were also good choices; easy to work with and a good experience. Silent World's boat had a bit too much diesel fumes for my taste, but not bad. I'd be happy to go back out with either.
We did three days of two-tank dives. All were on shallow reefs. Although I hear the deep wrecks are very nice, the shallow dives have short boat rides and only ten to fifteen minutes surface interval between them -- an important point when one of the divers is having seasickness issues. The diving was about as easy as it gets, with mild current and about 50 ft vis and easy navigation. The small boats do buck even in the small (about 3 ft) seas that were common, but still reboarding wasn't bad.
We dove with a different op each day, just to experiment. All were pretty similar: small boats (six to ten max) that weren't crowded (max six, min two divers), shallow reefs (30 to 20 feet was most common), no dive masters, limit of one hour bottom time. The boats had shade and water; all ops had a camera bucket for the boat and a dunk tank where you offload.
Our favorite was Blue Waters. His boat holds six but he took us as a pair. Friendly and easy to work with. He takes off from a kiosk right on the water rather than having a real shop there so I wouldn't have picked him if not for a recommendation I got here; but I'm happy to recommend him to others.
Quiescence and Silent World were also good choices; easy to work with and a good experience. Silent World's boat had a bit too much diesel fumes for my taste, but not bad. I'd be happy to go back out with either.
