Tackle Shack Divers
We are members of the Tackle Shack Divers scuba club in Pinellas Park, Florida. Meetings are held at 7:00 pm on the second Thursday of each month at Tackle Shack. If you are a diver in the south Pinellas County, Florida area and are looking to join a dive club, or are just curious about diving, please stop in. Visitors are always welcome!
Below is a small group of us on a dive trip to Marathon in the Florida Keys. See if you can spot Steve "the Perv" Brakke!!
Clearwater, Florida
We enjoy diving, spearfishing and lobstering out of our boat, the SeaBrat. The SeaBrat is a 21 foot Seacat® power catamaran. You can find out more about these unusual boats on our Boating Page and on our SeaCat Page
Although diving here on the west coast of Florida generally requires a boat, there are a few beach dives such as the Sugar Barge in Bradenton Beach and fossil diving at Venice Beach. Offshore diving in this area can be very good with visibility at times reaching 70 feet or more. The offshore ledges, wrecks and artificial reefs host a myriad of sealife and there is generally little or no current. Spearfishing is a popular sport in this region with grouper, snapper and amberjack common and abundant. Tropical fish are also common, particularly around the reefs and occasional coral patches occur on limestone bottom areas and ledges.
There are a few dive operators in this area and most of the local dive shops maintain a list of charters. One of the larger operators is here in the Clearwater area is Dive Clearwater which runs local trips and middlground trips regularly throughout the summer. Costs are generally in the $40-50 range for a two tank dive and the middlegrounds trips are $150 with 4 tanks and running more than 24 hours.
Venice Beach, Florida
Venice Beach has a substantial deposit of fossil material located just offshore. In fact the sand here is a dark grey, owing to the composition of fossil material which has been ground into fine particles. Small shark teeth can often be found lying about on the beach, but to find the really BIG fossils you have to don a scuba tank. This is an easy beach dive with the majority of the fossil deposits found in about 18-20 feet of water. We have found thousands of fossilized shark teeth, ranging in size from nearly microscopic to more than 3-inches long. Other fossils are also commonly found, both marine and terrestial in nature. A short list of some of the items we have found includes:
- shark teeth
- stingray spines
- ray teeth
- barracuda teeth
- turtle shell fragments
- porcupine fish mouth plates
- dugong/manatee teeth and ribs
- camel teeth
- horse teeth
- and other assorted unidentified bones
Diving in the Florida Keys
We've spent the past three summers vacationing in the Florida Keys, and we plan to return in 1998 as well (provided Monroe County doesn't prohibit vacation rentals). Contrary to many people's opinion, the Keys are not the greatest diving location in Florida. What the Keys do offer is excellent lobstering and spearfishing. There are coral reefs, obviously, but they receive an awful lot of pressure. Also, the visibility in the Keys can range from moderate (30-50 feet) to poor. We feel the best "look-see" diving in Florida is found out of Boynton Beach.
There is no shortage of dive operators in the Keys and its generally not hard to find an open spot on a boat. Costs are relatively low, given the short distance the boat must travel to reach the diving locations. Wreck and reef diving is the order of the day here. Diving on the wrecks such as the Duane, Bibb or Thunderbolt involves greater depths and the current can at times be formidable. Reef diving is generally much shallower (less than 30 feet) and usually protected from the strong currents so common on the wrecks.
Diving in Boynton Beach, Florida
Ahh...Boynton Beach, our favorite diving location! Diving here is almost entirely drift diving, due to the close location of the gulfstream. Visibiliy is generally terrific and the opportunities for underwater photography abound. We have a simple Ikelite Aquashot camera which uses the disposable/recycleable 35mm cameras. The clear water and abundant sealife help make underwater photography almost easy!
Florida Springs Diving
Springs in Florida offer tremendous visibility and year-round 72 degree temperatures. After having dived them you might find them a bit boring since, other than the springs themselves, there is little to see. Unless of course you happen to be a cave diver, in which case you are generally crazy...even more so than spearfisherman!
Lobstering
Here on the West Coast of Florida, lobster (locally called "bugs") are not extremely common. Spiny lobster are few and far between, but they are generally whoppers. More common is the shovel nose, or slipper lobster.
Spiney lobster aren't nearly as common here in the Clearwater area as they are in the Keys. Shovelnose or slipper lobster are more abundant, though not nearly in the concentrations that spiney lobster are found in South Florida. They are pretty difficult to spot, since when hugging the bottom, they look like just another rock. An exposed leg with its purple and yellow bands, or a twitch of their small purple antennae may be all that gives them away.
Spiney lobster are much easier to see with their brighter colors and long wavy antennae. They are a lot harder to catch as the spiney is much quicker to flee than the shovelnose is. The shovelnose is so confident of his camoflage that he is sure you don't see him right up until you grab him!
Spearfishing
Spearfishing is currently Jay's strongest interest. Fortunately for him, the local diving is conducive to abundant opportunities for spearfishing. The Florida Middlegrounds, some 75 miles or more to the northwest of Clearwater Pass is probably considered Mecca by most local spearfishers who have been there. With the new engines on the Seabrat, the Middlegrounds are reachable, though it takes nearly perfect weather before we're willing to travel that far. This year, we made two trips to the southern-most area which is the closest to Clearwater. The trip takes 3 to 4 hours aboard the SeaBrat and between 65 and 70 gallons of gas. We do carry an extra 12 gallons of fuel and plan to double that amount next year to allow an excursion farther north where the water shallows up a bit. For our boat, it's definitely a summer time trip only, when the typical day is no wind and flat seas with the risk of bad weather pretty well limited to thunder storms which we keep an eye out for.
The depths we encountered on our two trips this summer were from 100 to 120 feet deep. Current, visbility and water temperature are all highly variable and can change quickly. On some of our dives we could look up and clearly see the boat from the bottom with no noticeable current and a water temp of 80 degrees. A repetitive dive two hours later gave us 30 foot vis, a mild current and a water temp of 72 degrees. Things can change fast out there!
Given the deeper nature of these dives and repetitive dives, Jay has recently completed a nitrox diving class in preparation for next year's Middlegrounds trips. Though nitrox can be used to extend bottom time, with 80 cf tanks Jay won't have enough air to realize that benefit. Instead, the added safety and comfort will be the intended benefit of nitrox. The use of nitrox should allow for three or four dives per day. Since travel time represents such a large portion of the trip, the ability to make more dives in a day will certainly be worth the slight extra cost of a nitrox airfill.
The Middlegrounds are famous for the numbers and size of the fish. While we haven't found a spot yet that holds grouper, we have found enormous schools of amberjack along with large hogfish and mangrove snapper. We've also seen jewfish, cobia and numerous non-game species such as tropical fish. We caught a few big spiny lobster, but they all had eggs and were quickly released. Hopefully as our experience increases and we find more areas we will soon find some grouper areas and catch a few big lobsters which don't have eggs!
NEW!!! THE SCUBA X-FILES
Not everything underwater is as beautiful as the fish and in fact some things are downright frightening. Some examples of the more startling things which we have found on our dive are shown on our Scuba X-Files Page!
* * * WARNING * * *
The images found in the Scuba X-Files are both graphic and disturbing.
Click here to visit the Scuba X-Files!
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