I went diving in Key West for a few days in August. I used Captain’s Cove for my dive shop and I would give them an A+ for quality of service and professionalism.
Our first day we did two “reef” dives. I put the word “reef” in quotes because we dove where reefs used to be—before Stony Coral Tissue Disease hit the area five years ago and literally wiped out the entire coral reef. You will notice in my photos that there is very little color and that’s because nothing is living. Since there were almost no corals, there were no small, colorful reef fish and thus, no larger reef predators. I can’t say that I will return to Key West for diving for many years—and by then I will be probably be too old to dive.
The second day we dove the Vandenberg wreck. I have posted a photo of what the V looked like when they were scuttling it and then some of my shots from the dive. The ship was sunk in an area that had no reefs so there isn’t a lot of color on the V either although corals have started to grow on some parts of the ship. We were lucky in that the current was rather slow, the water temp was in the mid-to-upper 80s and the viz was at least 50 feet.
For those who dove with me on the reefs, if I took a photo of you and it came out OK then it is posted here. If you want me to remove it please let me know. If you want a copy then download it from here. (If you have a Mac then simply right click and you will get an option to Copy Image. I have no idea what Windows users need to do but it is probably similar.) If you want a high res version then send me an email with the picture description and I will send you one but it will generally have to be through Dropbox because the files are so big. I hope you all enjoy the photos.
