Flower Garden Banks

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The Goose:
I'm currently thinking about a trip to the flower gardens and was looking for thought and opinions... about marine life, operators, visibility etc...

I think the conditions vary greatly by season. I was there in March and we had about 60' vis, pretty large waves, and almost no current. (In fact they had to do a drop for the rig dive because with no current they couldn't tie off to the rig safely.) Water temp was in the mid to upper 60's.

I would say the diving ranges from intermediate on a good day to advanced on a bad on. You need to have your navigation skills down. The marine life is pretty good, the coral is not as colorfull as more southern destinations but lots of interesting life. In the spring you've got a good chance of seeing hammerheads, my favorites were the fire worms and blennys.

As far as operators are concerned you have two choices. Gulf Diving mentioned above and the SSII (http://www.seasearcherii.com/). Both are good operations, the main differences are that the Spree/Fling have nitrox available but they pack twice as many people on a similarly sized boat.
 
Goose,

Check the TSD board for alot more info on the Gardens. For travellers, the Gardens can be a challenge. The boats don't make the go/no go decision until about noon on Friday. They leave at about 9pm Friday night for the weekend trips. You can look at the weather bouy and get a pretty good idea what the conditions are going the be like and if it doesn't look good then you make the decision not to come. I have seen trips go that I thought would be cancelled.

The summer trips (July-September) have greater odds of going. Unless of course there is a tropical storm in the Gulf.

HTH

TwoBit
 
The main problem is you are from AL that said we do not know if the boat will go till the day it is supposed to go around noon or so. The boats leave at around 9pm Friday night for a two day trip.So if from Dallas you call around noon time and if it is a go you hop in the car and head to Free Port and keep your fingers crossed the whole way.
 
We've had cancellations 4 out of 4 times trying to do the Flower Gardens Banks. We've tried both the Rinn boats (twice) and the Sea Searcher (twice) . Three tries when we lived in South Texas, and one last year when I flew to Texas on a business trip in Galveston a week early to go dive first - (just in time for the hurricane).

At least I was able to have fun toying with my business companions from the midwest when it came to hurricanes . . . like telling them the worst weather related fatality count in US history was a hurricane in Galveston (albeit almost 100 years ago now), and watching their facial expressions as they could see the Weather Channel folks on the seawall from their big glass room windows at the San Luis Resort. Almost made up for me enduring another Great Lakes winter last year.
 

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