01John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
Monroe County. It is named for John D. Pennekamp, a Miami newspaper editor who campaigned for the Everglades and then for this reef when it was being stripped for the curio trade.
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When is lobster season in Florida?
Florida's spiny lobster season opens with a two-day sport season, often called mini season, on the last consecutive Wednesday and Thursday of July, and the regular season runs from August 6 to March 31.
The 2026 sport season was July 29 and 30; the 2027 one is July 28 and 29. In the regular season the limit is six lobsters per person a day. In the sport season it is twelve, except in Monroe County, the Keys, and in Biscayne National Park, where it stays at six. A lobster's carapace must measure more than 3 inches, measured in the water, and you must carry a measuring device the whole time. You need a saltwater license and a $5 lobster permit unless you are exempt. Some water is never open: Everglades and Dry Tortugas national parks, the no-take zones of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, the Biscayne Bay and Card Sound Lobster Sanctuary, and five coral reef protection areas in Biscayne National Park. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is also closed to lobstering during the sport season.
Where to go from here.
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02Biscayne National Park
Miami-Dade County. Four systems meet inside it and each depends on the next: the mangrove forest along the shoreline, the shallow water of Biscayne Bay, the northernmost Florida Keys, and the coral reef offshore.
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03Dry Tortugas National Park
Monroe County. Seven small keys break the surface: Loggerhead at sixty-four acres, Garden Key at forty-two, Bush Key at thirty, and Long, Hospital, Middle and East Keys. Some have vanished and come back with storms.
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04Everglades National Park
Miami-Dade County. Congress authorized it in 1934 and it was established in 1947, and it was the first national park created to protect a fragile living system rather than a mountain or a canyon.
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05Where is the snorkeling in Florida?
The only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States runs down the Keys, and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park off Key Largo in Monroe County is where most people meet it.
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06Where is the scuba diving in Florida?
Saltwater diving means the Keys and the reef: John Pennekamp in Monroe County, and Biscayne National Park in Miami-Dade, which is mostly water rather than land.
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07Do you need a fishing license in Florida?
Yes, unless you are exempt: Florida requires a freshwater or saltwater fishing license, or both, for anyone 16 or older.
Read the answer →Where this comes from.
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, spiny lobster recreational regulations ↗ Read September 23, 2026
- National Park Service, Biscayne National Park, fishing and lobstering ↗ Read September 23, 2026
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, saltwater licenses and permits ↗ Read September 23, 2026
More questions like this.
Where is the bonefish fishing in Florida?
Bonefish are a fish of the far south, in the Keys and Biscayne Bay, and in Florida every one goes back: the species has been catch and release only since September 1, 2013.
When is flounder season in Florida?
Flounder may be kept for most of the year, but every year the harvest closes statewide from October 15 through November 30 and reopens on December 1.
Where do you catch sheepshead in Florida?
Sheepshead, the striped fish some call convict fish, live near structure in coastal water: oyster bars, seawalls and tidal creeks.
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