Taking a bit of a SCUBA diving vacation with my spouse and middle son who is an avid diver.
We dove with the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park folk on one of the countries largest underwater marine parks.
The first hour long dive was in the Key Largo Dry Rocks Sanctuary Preservation Area Reef where we navigated underwater to see the famous underwater statue known as “Christ of the Deep”. https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/zones/spas/kldryrocks.html
There were three boatloads of snorkelers there to hover at the surface above us as we explored the bottom, and they also acted as decoys to ward of the marauding sharks.
Our second dive was on a real wreck, a 360 meter long WWII cargo ship carrying phosphorus. It was running silent without lights when it collided with a tanker and sank on April 9, 1942 while it was avoiding U-Boats. The story of its sinking is quite fascinating; see the Wikipedia page on the S.S. Benwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Benwood
We saw many schools of different types of fish on this wreck, as well as a moray eel, a nurse shark, and 5 different turtles. The water was extremely clear, making the dive one of the best I have ever done.
This video is on the dive boat as we returned to shore about noon after the morning dives. Don’t get seasick!!
