John 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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Where 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.
Freshwater diving in Florida is a different sport and the state is known for it worldwide. Devil's Den and Blue Grotto in Levy County are open-water caverns you descend into through a hole in the ground. Ginnie Springs in Gilchrist County, Vortex Spring in Holmes, Morrison Springs in Walton and Wes Skiles Peacock Springs in Suwannee County are the cave systems. Cave diving needs cave certification, not an open-water card, and the warnings at the entrances are there because people have ignored them.
The places named in this answer.
Biscayne 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.
Open the guide →Devil’s Den Prehistoric Spring
Levy County. The roof of a limestone cavern fell in long ago and left an opening at the surface with clear water about a hundred and twenty feet across below it. Light comes down through that opening and that is what people photograph.
Open the guide →Blue Grotto Dive Resort
Levy County. There are three parts to it. The open basin drops to about forty feet and holds training platforms, which is why so many divers get certified here. Below that the upper cavern runs to around fifty feet and contains an air bell with breathable air pumped down from the surface, so a diver can surface inside the rock and take the regulator out, which is an odd and memorable thing to do.
Open the guide →Ginnie Springs Outdoors
Gilchrist County. Ginnie Springs Outdoors is a privately run property in High Springs with seven springs on it and the Santa Fe River running through. The water holds 72 degrees the year round and is clear enough that swimmers can see the bottom from the surface.
Open the guide →Vortex Spring
Holmes County. Denzel Dockery, a Navy veteran known as Doc, established it. The basin is two hundred feet across with sloping sides, the spring puts out about twenty-eight million gallons a day, and the water sits at sixty-eight degrees with no thermocline and is usually very clear, which is exactly what a dive school wants.
Open the guide →Morrison Springs County Park
Walton County. The spring pool is 250 feet across and puts out an estimated 48 million gallons of clear water a day, with peaks recorded at 70 million. Water surfaces through three separate cavities.
Open the guide →Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park
Suwannee County. What is above ground is quiet: a nature trail, picnic tables, and a set of springs and sinkholes with names divers know by heart, Peacock I, Peacock II, Peacock III, Orange Grove, Challenge, Cistern, Waterhole, Pothole and Olsen.
Open the guide →More questions like this.
Which Florida springs can you swim in?
Florida has more first-magnitude springs than anywhere else on earth, and most of them run at about seventy-two degrees every day of the year, so they are cold in August and warm in January.
Where can you go scalloping in Florida?
Bay scalloping is a Big Bend and Nature Coast thing, from Franklin County down to Hernando.
Where are the public boat ramps in Florida?
Nearly every coastal county runs free or low-cost public ramps, and the ones attached to a park are the easiest because they have parking for a truck and trailer.
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