DiveShopBarbie
Registered
Hi all,
I live on the east coast, so naturally, want Florida diving to be wonderful as it is easy and cheap to access (compared to other wonderful tropical dive locations).
Unfortunately, I've never had a good experience in Florida diving and want to know if it is a fluke and I need to keep giving it a chance, or if others have felt it doesn't quite do it for them.
I dove at Riviera Beach and Key Largo (separate trips). At Riviera Beach, the viz was terrible and though a guide came with the boat dive, they dropped down in the viz, lost everyone, so my buddy and I led everyone through the safety stop and back to the boat. So that wasn't fun. There may have been a lot of fun critters, but due to bad viz, I couldn't tell you. My other dives there were okay - lobster season, so it was fun to see a few catching lobsters; however, current was terrible, felt a little like a cattle boat, and I wasn't impressed by the dive op and guides.
My Key Largo dive was the worst I've had ever. We dove with Sailfish Scuba because they told us they only do 6-packs and reviews said they were great for no cattle boating. After we drove down there from Miami, turns out they put us ON a cattle boat with a different company to 'save fuel.' We were put in a group (with a guide) with two brand new divers. Not only that, the captain put us in a 15 ft dive with a terrible current. My buddy and I had to spend our energy staying in one place on the bottom (at the guides request) while he calmed down the new divers at the surface, and consequently, when they were ready to go we were exhausted. I have nothing to say except for how exhausting and dangerous that was, and how the captain never should have dropped us (let alone new divers) into that current. The next dive was slightly better (and the captain apologized for poor site choice, to his credit), but we didn't see anything (one sting ray), only went down to 15 ft, and again, with the huge group of people jumping off the boat, any critters in the area were long gone by the time we dropped down.
Sorry for the rant! My question is this - have those just been fluke experiences and should we give south Florida another try?
If so, where and with which operators? We were thinking giving Key Largo another go this year (or another place on the Keys); not sure about Boynton but have heard some good things. Any opinions on those?
Thanks in advance for weighing in!!
PS - I have searched other Key Largo forums and got some good ideas from those, but wanted to pose the broader question around quality of operators and best area in Florida to stick around.
I live on the east coast, so naturally, want Florida diving to be wonderful as it is easy and cheap to access (compared to other wonderful tropical dive locations).
Unfortunately, I've never had a good experience in Florida diving and want to know if it is a fluke and I need to keep giving it a chance, or if others have felt it doesn't quite do it for them.
I dove at Riviera Beach and Key Largo (separate trips). At Riviera Beach, the viz was terrible and though a guide came with the boat dive, they dropped down in the viz, lost everyone, so my buddy and I led everyone through the safety stop and back to the boat. So that wasn't fun. There may have been a lot of fun critters, but due to bad viz, I couldn't tell you. My other dives there were okay - lobster season, so it was fun to see a few catching lobsters; however, current was terrible, felt a little like a cattle boat, and I wasn't impressed by the dive op and guides.
My Key Largo dive was the worst I've had ever. We dove with Sailfish Scuba because they told us they only do 6-packs and reviews said they were great for no cattle boating. After we drove down there from Miami, turns out they put us ON a cattle boat with a different company to 'save fuel.' We were put in a group (with a guide) with two brand new divers. Not only that, the captain put us in a 15 ft dive with a terrible current. My buddy and I had to spend our energy staying in one place on the bottom (at the guides request) while he calmed down the new divers at the surface, and consequently, when they were ready to go we were exhausted. I have nothing to say except for how exhausting and dangerous that was, and how the captain never should have dropped us (let alone new divers) into that current. The next dive was slightly better (and the captain apologized for poor site choice, to his credit), but we didn't see anything (one sting ray), only went down to 15 ft, and again, with the huge group of people jumping off the boat, any critters in the area were long gone by the time we dropped down.
Sorry for the rant! My question is this - have those just been fluke experiences and should we give south Florida another try?
If so, where and with which operators? We were thinking giving Key Largo another go this year (or another place on the Keys); not sure about Boynton but have heard some good things. Any opinions on those?
Thanks in advance for weighing in!!
PS - I have searched other Key Largo forums and got some good ideas from those, but wanted to pose the broader question around quality of operators and best area in Florida to stick around.