Snorkelers and Divers Flock to Reef Off Key Largo

KEY LARGO, Fla. _ A Hollywood boat, a gangster movie and a mangrove swamp are three of the biggest on-land attractions on 33-mile-long Key Largo.

The 30-foot-long boat is from the 1951 movie “The African Queen” with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. It is suspended in the air on a dock off the Overseas Highway (U.S. 1), Key Largo’s main drag.

Not far away is the Caribbean Club, a night spot featured in the 1947 movie “Key Largo” with Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Bogart. The town was named Rock Harbor and changed its name to Key Largo after the movie came out.

The mangrove swamps, with wooden boardwalks and an observation tower, sit at the edge of a state park, John Pennekamp.

But Key Largo’s biggest attractions are offshore and underwater.

Key Largo modestly calls itself the dive capital of the world. It is the No. 1 dive city in the United States, with dive shops, outfitters and lodging that caters to divers and snorkelers. It has more dive outfitters per capita than any other American city.

The blue-green waters offer coral reefs, shipwrecks and lots of opportunities for scuba divers, snorkelers and tourists in glass-bottomed boats to view the underwater world.

The island with its 12,000 residents is an hour south of Miami and is the largest and northernmost of the Florida Keys. It is bordered on the west by Florida Bay and the Everglades backcountry and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean.

Key Largo is known for its shallow and easily accessible reefs, its wrecks, 55 types of coral and 600 species of tropical fish.

The colorful reefs, the third longest in the world, are three to seven miles offshore.

The greatest variety of corals is typically found in 15 to 35 feet of water.

Waters are warm: 70 to 78 degrees in the winter and in the low to mid-80s in the summer.

Visibility under water ranges from 25 to 80 feet, with an average water clarity of 30 to 50 feet.

The fish are diverse and plentiful. Schools of blue-striped grunts have been called the most iconic fish of the reefs.

There are also yellowtailed snappers, parrotfish, grouper, angelfish, butterflyfish, sergeant majors, Bermuda chubs, copper sweepers, horse-eyed jacks, gray snappers, goatfish, glass minnows, Atlantic spadefish and more.

The waters off Key Largo are a real-life tropical aquarium.

There are more than two dozen dive areas alone on Key Largo’s famed Molasses Reef. It is the largest reef with the greatest variety of terrain and fish. French Reef, with its caves, canyons and big fish, appeals to scuba divers. White Bank Dry Rocks is perfect for beginners. It is the largest snorkeling reef.

More experienced divers can visit the USCG Bibb and the USCG Duane, which both sit in just over 100 feet of water. They were intentionally sunk in 1987.

In 2002, the 510-foot-long USS Spiegel was sunk six miles offshore to create an artificial reef. It sits in 130 feet of water.

The Key Largo Dry Rocks is the site of the famous Christ of the Deep Statue. The 9-foot-tall bronze statue in 25 feet of water surrounded by coral reefs may be the most famous site in Pennekamp.

Other reefs off Key Largo include Conch, Grecian Rocks, the Elbow and Turtle Rocks.

Since the 1500s, more than 800 shipwrecks have been documented along the reefs and sand flats of the nearly 800 islands that make up the Florida Keys.

Today divers can visit the 1733 Spanish Galleon Trail, an underwater trail with 13 wrecks of Spanish galleons that sank in a storm off the Florida Keys.

For information, go to http://flheritage.com/archaeology/underwater/galleontrail or call 305-852-7717 or 850-245-6444.

The reefs are surrounded by seagrass beds and mangrove swamps. There may be manatees, dolphins and sea turtles.

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park _ the first underwater state park in the United States _ features nearly 180 miles of living coral reefs.

It stretches 25 miles along the shore and about three miles into the Atlantic Ocean, with nearly all of the park underwater.

The state park is named after a Miami Herald newspaper editor who pushed to save the threatened coral reefs off Key Largo.

The fear was divers were killing the reef fish with spear guns and the reefs were being dynamited and destroyed.

The park’s creation in 1959 protected close-to-shore reefs and fish. In 1975, the creation of the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary provided new protection to the offshore reefs.

The Key Largo federal sanctuary became part of the larger Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary that was created in 1990. It covers 3,674 square miles.

Pennekamp state park offers glass-bottomed boat tours and concessionaires offer diving and snorkeling trips from the park. You can also camp, fish, canoe, kayak, swim and picnic, and there’s a visitor center with an aquarium.

You can hike the Mangrove Trail, a short loop through the mangrove swamp with its dense vegetation of red, black and white mangroves, trees that live in the brackish saltwater and shelter small fish.

Or visit the short Wild Tamarind Trail, a short loop that features South Florida’s array of trees on a hardwood hammock: red-barked gumbo limbos, West Indian mahoganies, strangler fig, wild coffee, Jamaica dogwoods and wild tamarinds.

The park is at Mile Marker 102.5 (that’s the distance to Key West, which lies to the south and west over 42 bridges).

Park admission is $6 for a vehicle with two occupants.

For information, contact John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, P.O. Box 487, Key Largo, FL 33037; 305-451-1202; www.floridastateparks.org/pennekamp.

For glass-bottomed boat and sailing tours and snorkeling trips, contact Coral Reef Park Co. Inc., the park concessionaire, at P.O. Box 1560, Key Largo, FL 33036; 305-451-6316. For scuba tours and instruction, call 305-451-6322. The Web site is http://www.pennekamppark.com.

There are three snorkeling trips per day, each lasting 2 and one-half hours, with 90 minutes of water time. The tour with equipment rental costs about $33 for adults and $28 for children.

You can also get information from the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary at P.O. Box 1083, Key Largo, FL 33037; 305-852-7717; http://floridakeys.noaa.gov.

There’s more to do in Key Largo than diving and snorkeling. It is also a place to go sailing, swimming at the beach and paddling a kayak on eco-tours.

It is a popular place for game fishing. You can find sailfish offshore, bonefish in the Atlantic shallows and redfish and tarpon in Florida Bay.

In Key Largo, you can go swimming with dolphins, if you have some big bucks, at Dolphin Cove and Dolphins Plus.

You can even cruise on the African Queen when it is docked in Key Largo. Reservations required. The fee is $15 a person. Call 305-451-4655.

The Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail for walkers and bicyclists is being developed. Forty miles of new trail is planned to link the 60 miles of existing trails between Key Largo and Key West. For information, call 305-853-3571 or see www.floridadep.org/gwt/state/keystrail/default.htm.

You can get tourist information from the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce at 106000 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, FL 33037; 800-822-1088 or 305-451-4747; http://www.floridakeys.org.

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(c) 2007, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).

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Key Largo

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