Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to drop a line and welcome the two newest PADI Open Water Scuba Instructors to the ranks of dive professionals. Jason and Eric sailed through the Instructor Examination this weekend.

Jason hails from Alabama and Eric is from Minnesota by way of Naples and is also in the Rainbow Reef Internship program. We only had a�10 days�to get to know Jason but he hung out with the whole crew and quickly became one of the gang as he is quite a character. Eric has been at Rainbow Reef for about�3 months and has risen to the occassion when his number was called for the IDC! This was our first class with our new Course Director Ken Wilhelm and everyone had a great time. Captain Bill was also participating and working on his IDC Staff Instructor certification.

See you at the April IDC!

Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Hi Gang,

Today we found ourselves in the middle of a busy Spring Break with lots of stuff to report! Mon, Tues, and Wed were complete blow outs! The wind was so bad, we couldn’t get the trips out. That doesn’t happen to us very much and it’s been a long time since it has, so hopefully they keep the wind machine turned off for a while!

We always seem to have some friends or family in town, but today we found ourselves with both. Jerry and Nancy Simon are back again.. I think they come dive with us just about every holiday, and we are always happy to see them. You can catch a glimpse of the kind of characters they are on the video.

The family that is in town is one of my cousins from my mother’s side. His name is Jason Smith, and he is on Spring break with a bunch of his buddies from “The” Ohio State University. He’s a senior and will graduate this year. I haven’t seen him in a while, so it was nice to catch up. He was really excited to dive and he had a great time, which is more than we can say for some of his buddies. They enjoyed the first dive, but when it was time to dive again, they were a bit seasick, “fed some fish”�and then just wanted to catch up on sleep! It seems they were out late last night,�partying and only got 1 hour of sleep before they drove down from Ft. Lauderdale to dive! It’s like they are on Spring Break or something! hahahha.

All in all, we had a lot of wind and current in the morning. So the waves were about 3 feet and the current was about medium all over. We went out to NorthStar and Hole in the Wall in the afternoon and the waves subsided some, and the current was gone. We had some residual surge but we were treated to about 70 feet of visibility! Pretty nice for the winter diving, especially considering all the wind we had earlier in the week.

Click here to see the VIDEO (requires Flash) and join us for a recap of our dive today!

Article Author:

Eric
Open Water Scuba Instructor

Saturday afternoon proved to be one of those days that reminds me why I choose the Keys for my diving career.� We headed out to Molasses Reef with sunny skies, great viz and little wind.� I was guiding Harry from the Sea Ventures group out of Atlanta and Jeff a local resident.� We descended down and were immediatley greeted by a 5 foot reef shark who was very accomadating by swimming with us for what seemed like at least 5 minutes.� He would dissapear into the blue only to reappear moments later.� This went on for a bit and my photographers were quite pleased.� We also stummbled upon a small spotted eel, (2) southern stingrays, a couple of lobster, and at the end of the dive we hung out with a green moray eel.� This was all in addition to the tons of reef fish and schools of barracudas.� After we got on the boat and after the high fives were complete, I stated to my dive group, “Well for dive two, I’m not sure if I can top that dive,�maybe we if bump into an eagle ray or something…”.� Well wouldn’t you know it, 20 minutes into our dive a goerguos eagle ray with about a 9 foot wing span made at least 5 passes by us.� I was fortunate enough to grab a short video of him and some awesome pics.� As we motored back to port the energy level and excitement was�booming!� Just another day diving here in Key Largo…�

Article Author:

Eric
Open Water Scuba Instructor

One of my favorite types of diving is “night diving”.� So whenever there is an opportunity to either guide at night, or an empty seat on the boat, I always volunteer, and boy am I glad I did this past week.� I was fortunate enough to guide back to back night diving�trips Weds and Thurs.� Weds. was especially interesting.� We pulled up to Fire Coral Cave on Molasses reef, only to realize there was a strong current, but that didn’t dissuade Capt. D.J.� He simply asked, “So what do you guys think about a night, drift dive?”� Of course the entire group was up for it, with extreme excitement actually.� We drifted all of “Mo” and bumped into all kinds of night-life.� Thursday was more of the same; turtles, squid and even a free swimming octopuss.� I was fortunate enough to document some of our new found friends and am looking forward to the next night time adventure.