Good Dive Operators South Florida

Hi we will go tomorrow for a ten days of vacation to Southern Florida.

Diving is not our main target (I think the first time on a trip since 5 years ;-) ) but we still want to get our heads underwater a couple of times.

We will be on the Keys for 3 days first and will then be in Deerfield Beach after that.

Can you recommend any dive operators there?

What we want:

1) No "Cattleboats"

2) Not to short Dive duration limits (at least 45', 12l Tanks)

3) Preferable halfday trips (especially on the Keys)

4) Decent Rental Equipment 'cause we wont take our equipment with us this time.

I'm pretty curious how I handle a S50 without external flash after 3 Years DSLR shooting. As I said the Big stuff stays at home.

Thank you in advance!

Simon

Simon,

Just did a couple of dives off of the Deerfield Beach Area. I went with a recommendation on here for a place called idivestarfish.com Craig will let you dive your limits however everything off the boat has to carry a dive flag (I suggest renting a rig which allows you to inflate the dive marker before you surface rather than drag one across the surface with a reel attached to you). Craigs boat is small so expect no more than 10 divers. I was surprised by how healthy the reef was in that area of Florida. Large Barrel Sponges, sharks, rays, turtles and a nice moray. In any case a very relaxing time. I'm not sure what you're into but my wife and I did a beach dive right off of Deerfield Beach on the South end just before the private condos. There are some rocks that divide the condos from the beach and you can enter in front of the rocks. Dixie divers (954-420-0009) has a dive shop really close and if you go on there website you can print out directions to the shore entry at Deerfield. Not much in the way of coral but my wife and I did see a lot of animals that we'd never seen before (2.5ft long puffer fish! Rockfish, pipefish, and a yellow banded black fish we'd never seen before). This was our first ever shore dive so maybe I'm not the best source but it was a very easy one. You park your car very near the entry point so you're not lugging your gear too far. There was a slight current which wanted to take you North toward the peer. We didn't dive with Dixie Divers but after visiting their store and renting some tanks and gear we think that it would be a decent place to dive with should we find ourselves down that way again. It appears to be a family run outfit. In the Keys we have dove with a number of operators. So far our favorite is a husband and wife team at Captain Hooks. She's a photographer and he's the captain. I haven't been down that far in the keys for about 3 years so I don't know if they're still there or not. However, they ran a small boat with about 6-8 people on board. They also chose shallower sites with tons of stuff to look at. Hope that helps!