Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

Because you’ll see great stuff, that’s why!  These pictures are courtesy of Amber, who dove with us last week.  She went out with some friends and our own guide Josh and had a spectacular dive.  They both described it as the “best dive ever!”  A picture is worth a thousand words, so check these out.  Talk about some nice encounters on the reef.  In addition to the pictured marine life, they saw a nice nurse shark as well.

Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

What better way to end one year and start the next off right than a couple of amazing dives?  There simply is no better way.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Key Largo- about 77 degrees, sunny and perfect.  New PADI Open Water diver Cindi T and I headed out on the Voyager with the crew of Captain Zach, Josh, and Jardin to do some exploring.  We went to Molasses reef, which never fails to deliver when you’re in the mood to see some really beautiful underwater life.

The first dive we enjoyed seeing a lot of gorgeous, healthy corals along with a huge variety of fish.  The highlight was the beautiful southern stingray that Jardin found for us right at the end.  What a beauty!  He spent a little time with us, then moved on but it was a delightful visit.

The second dive was even nicer, featuring a huge pufferfish (unpuffed, because we left it alone in peace) and toward the end a nurse shark napping under a ledge.  We also saw a few lobster along the way and lots of other marine life including a colorful scorpion fish.  I looked in every eel hole with my new dive light that Santa brought me, but I had no luck looking for eels!  I’ll find one next time, I’ll bet!  Stay tuned!

Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

The morning was crisp, a chill was in the air and I seriously considered staying in my warm bed. I got up though, since one of my very good friends, Cindi T, just finished her certification and was anxious to get in the water and get some dives in before heading back to AZ. The ocean is hard to find out there, although they have sand, which is a good start.

We headed out onto the deep boat with DJ at the helm, Molly the awesome mate and Shivering Dale along as the guide/DM. Jeff the awesome instructor was there with a few students and we headed out bright and early to see what we could see.

The group dove the Spiegel Grove first, and from all accounts a great time was had. Good vis, not a lot of current and a relaxing dive. Cindi and I sat that one out, as we were only doing the Benwood yesterday.

When we got to the benwood, we had a fantastic time. Nice visibility, very little current and lots of life out there. We saw schools of yellowtail snapper, some trumpet fish, trunk fish, and most interestingly; a huge midnight parrotfish that was darting in and out of his hiding place. He was kind enough to stop and let me get some photos of him. I think we take parrotfish for granted sometimes in our quest to see bigger, better stuff in the ocean, but they really are a gorgeous fish and can be impressive in size. Have you ever heard a school of them munching away at a piece of coral? It is really a unique experience.

That’s it for yesterday’s dives- if you’re debating getting out there to dive, remember this:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

I look forward to this afternoon when Captain Zach, Josh and Jardin will take us on an adventure with 2 shallow dives.

Article Author:

dale
Open Water Scuba Instructor

sorry its been a while since i have posted many new and interesting things have been going on in my life at rainbow reef. went to DEMA got some new certifications. been teaching some discover scuba classes. and the most interesting was guiding a group and having a experience that i will not have anytime in the near future.

we were diving on french reef with 90 ft of visibility, no current, and the sun shining down on us. about half way through the dive I saw some fishing line floating in the water and grabbed it so it would not get stuck somewhere and damage the reef. i started to pull in the line when i noticed it was a little heavy. After i pulled in about 50ft of line i saw a very big fish and thought that it might be going after the lure but to my suprise it was attached to it and was very tired i decided to get the lure out of the mouth when i noticed that it was making it unble to open and catch its own food. so Jackie Morrison, another diver, and myself proceeded to get the lure out of the mouth. as we were taking it out, a green moray eel came out of nowhere and and attacked the grouper. we were shocked to see the eel so close and we got it away from the grouper and finished taking the hooks out. after we were done the eel came back and was looking for the fish but no such luck since we set it loose.

here are some of the pictures that we took during the dive.

Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Hi gang,

We had the honor of hosting Karin Suter-Erath from Basel, Switzerland on our dive trip this afternoon. We are of course honored to have all of our divers, but Karin is a special diver. Karin is a Paraplegic. She does not have the use of her legs, but that doesn’t stop her from diving! The more we learned about her, the more we found out that not much stops her! That would include the current we had today. I’ll tell you what, I had fins and working legs and the current was a bit of a challenge to deal with. She just swam right through it with only her hands with no help from anyone. I was impressed to be sure! Karin works at a rehabilitation clinic in Switzerland and teaches patients to play basketball and Tennis. Not only that, she competed for team Switzerland in the Paralympic games in Bejing, China in the Tennis category. She is Open Water certified, and had been on 16 dives before we met her.

Jeff Martin is one of our Instructors and like quite a few us us at Rainbow Reef he is also a certified HSA Instructor (Handicapped Scuba Association)and Dive Buddy. Jeff was her dive buddy for the afternoon and along with Karin they had a great dives! We did a drift dive at French Reef and Jardin who just completed the IDC portion of the Internship and became a PADI OWSI on Sunday was kind enough to carry the drift flag for us. We had a wonderful time with Karin, she is such a nice woman and we are very happy to get to know her a little bit. We hope to see her again soon!

Join us for a few minutes to meet Karin and see our dive with her this afternoon. CLICK HERE to Dive with Karin

Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Hi all,

It’s been a busy fall so far, and sorry we haven’t had to much time to post to the blog, but we will try to get to that a little more regularly!

Rainbow Reef would like to congratulate Chuck Lewis, for his 1000th dive! Chuck and his dive buddie Mellie are frequent divers with us. They visit us every summer for dozens of dives, and Chuck hit a very important milestone this past October. Wow! Sure some people have more, but if you think about it, for most non professional recreational divers, that is a big number!

Chuck not being one for making a big deal out of such things, Mellie asked us to help her set up a surprise party for him on the boat, to be unveiled after surfacing from the dive. Everyone was in on it, Gabrielle, Zack, Joey, Jesus and the rest of the crew! I think we got him, and he was very surprised!

One of the things Chuck enjoys doing is taking his video camera on dives, his 1000th dive was no different. Normally I end up putting together all the videos on this blog, but this one was produced by Chuck himself, to commemorate the occasion!

So CLICK HERE to Dive with Chuck on Dive 1000!!

Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

Today was so awesome that I wanted to just re-wind it and have it all over again!

It was a small but enthusiastic crowd today on the boat.  I had a special request for Divemaster/Instructor Brad: Show me  a turtle!  I haven’t seen a turtle in ages.  It seems that every dive I come up and someone says “Did you see the turtle?” and I’ve missed it again.  So today I said “Brad.  No more goofing around.  TURTLE.  Show me!”

Well, the aquatic critters do so love Brad.  He gets in the water and he’s like Aquaman; he starts putting out the calls and the best stuff shows up.  Sure enough, what do you think we saw on dive #1?  A turtle.  Gorgeous and he swam around for a while letting me get some good photos.  We also saw a shark for a moment, a scorpion fish, some barracuda and a plethora of other underwater life.  Can you beat having a dive guide that takes requests? I think not!

Dive #2 was amazing, and I really didn’t think we could top #1.  We drifted Molasses reef, and guess who showed up and drifted it with us? How about 3 beautiful spotted eagle rays?  Yes indeed.  They drifted along, so graceful and lovely and they stayed to our outside for much of the dive, occasionally re-appearing to show off their grace and beauty to us.  We were on an incredible portion of the reef; very unspoiled and pristine.  There were numerous large french angel fish, the aforementioned rays, tons of bright corals and even some lobster.

Enjoy the pictures, but above all, come out and enjoy some diving.  The weather is perfect, the diving is great and the staff will even conjure up the critter of your choice.  OK, that last part may not be true, but it seems to work out that way for me.  Happy diving!

Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

Why yes, yes I did! What a spectacular week it has been in Key Largo for diving. Really; if you are sitting at home wondering if you should get out and dive, the only answer is YES. Do it.

Yesterday I did the afternoon dive and it was simply gorgeous. Great weather, reasonably calm seas and an enthusiastic group on the boat. Jeff was our guide in the water and showed us some great stuff, most notably a HUGE green eel that was just laying under a ledge for the world to see. Usually you just see them sticking their heads out of a hole in the coral, but he was just on display and so beautiful.

The second dive was even better, as if that’s possible. I saw and photographed what I *think* is a little blue shrimp of some kind. Very different from the usual large fish I like to take pictures of. Sometimes you have to remember to slow down and look at the small stuff as well as enjoy the big stuff.

Gotta run for now, it’s a lovely day and I may just…you guessed it…go diving!

Article Author:

Suzette
Advanced Open Water

Well, it was an awesome week of diving with Rainbow Reef this week. The days blended together some, but I’ll do my best to recap what really stood out for me on each day.

First, on Wednesday we had an incredible Discover Scuba dive with Megan and her student, Kat. I don’t know if Kat will ever bother going out again, since on her first dive (which you never would have known, she was such a natural) she/we saw a shark, a huge ray, about a million fish, jellyfish- you name it! It was simply a spectacular day on Snapper Ledge. Megan must have used all of her critter calling talents to put on a show like that.
That same day we did a drift dive on Molasses with Jeff leading the way and it was a relaxing, fun dive. There is nothing quite like playing “follow the flag” to make for a fantastic day of diving. On that dive, we saw a big scorpion fish (they really do blend, wow!), a giant ugly sea cucumber, and a slew of gorgeous corals.

Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Hi gang,

So my old friend Paolo from Miami Beach called me up the other day and wanted to take his girlfriend Katarzyna diving. Growing up in Poland, where they aren’t exactly known for great diving, she has never been diving, so naturally we got her in our PADI Discover Scuba Class happening on Thursday. What a great student! She did great in the pool, and then we took her out to the reef after lunch. She had a blast! She got to see stingrays, sharks and more fish than she could count. We think she might still be smiling.. It was also a nice day for my good friend Paolo.. He runs a famous modeling agency in Miami Beach and it’s a pretty high stress environment, and he works too much! So both Katarzyna and I were thrilled we could get him out diving on a rare day off. To make it a true day off, she even hid Paolo’s blackberry!

It was great to catch up with Paolo, and it was also very nice to meet Katarzyna. I can tell Paolo is very happy around her, and for good reason, she is a sweetheart who is always smiling. Hope everything works out for them! We wouldn’t be surprised to see Katarzyna back to get certified soon, she was a natural underwater!

We stopped at Snapper Ledge and then we did a drift dive on the shallow end of Molasses Reef. Probably about 100 feet of visibility and a light current. The water was 86 degrees and we could only measure the waves in inches! The weather forecast is AWESOME for this Labor Day Weekend.. Hope you will be joining us for the last big holiday of the summer and our season..

CLICK HERE TO WATCH Katarzyna Discover Scuba Diving!