16 Oct 2020
I was starting to get antsy being cooped up in the house, not being able to travel due to Covid restrictions and really wanted to do some diving. I trained in a lake up here- it was cold and murky and totally not my thing, but I was getting desperate so I drove out to one of our local lakes only to find that the area dive shops had closed up early due to low traffic. I thought about a quick trip to Hawai’i, since they were reopening the day before my time off work started, but there were a lot of hoops to jump through and it seemed like a lot of work. So I decided to give Florida another try.
I have really bad luck when it comes to the Keys- the last few times I’ve been down there, tropical storms roll through and the boats don’t go out. So I waited until the week before so I could keep an eye on the weather, then booked this trip at the last minute.
I’ve been diving with Rainbow Reef since my certification many years ago and every 3rd Friday they do a Dive Against Debris reef clean-up that I’ve been trying to do for ages now, but between being able to get time off work and the weather, I haven’t been able to get in on one of these dives, until now 🙂
We spent the morning learning how to safely remove trash from the reef, as well as how we can document it so progress at various sites can be tracked.
Then we went out to Conch Wall for our first dive: the site was actually quite clean, we mostly just removed fishing line. Our second site was Pickles Reef: I rescued a (still functioning) fishing pole! as well as more line and a few hooks/sinkers.
Back on the boat, everything gets sorted:
(I didn’t bring my camera on this dive, so these pictures are courtesy of dive guide Jesus)
Our garbage collection!
And our group:
They also do a Coral Restoration dive (2nd Friday of the month) that I will one day make it down for!