I now live less than an hour drive from Key largo in the Florida Keys. With such close access, I can actually SCUBA dive gorgeous waters and reef more easily—an activity I usually reserve for long-distance and international travel.
This increased access opened up my mind to the idea of enhancing my SCUBA certification. I’ve always wondered about Enriched Air Nitrox (EANx) diving and so I decided to take the “plunge” so to speak! In doing so , I signed up to take the course and pre-paid for 6 dives with Rainbow Reef dive company in Key Largo. Whenever I feel like going, I can drive down, hop on a boat and go diving!
It has been 5 years since I last dove with Rainbow Reef and it was amazing once again! The visibility was great for diving 2 wrecks and encountering 2 sharks!
What is Enriched Air Nitrox Diving?
Diving with Enriched Air Nitrox (sometimes shortened to EANx or “Nitrox”) is when you intake oxygen at a higher percentage than regular SCUBA tanks. The benefits are longer dives especially at deep depths and lowered risk of decompression sickness (or “the bends”).
Basically, a diver’s body needs to expel the nitrogen that builds in the blood as a result of the intake of oxygen while diving. Enriched Air lessens the amount of nitrogen that builds up. This makes it safer to dive for longer!
I decided to take the online course to learn this technical certification for diving. It’s an add on to my advanced open water certification.
Since it was my birthday, I saw this course as a gift to myself! I’ve always heard from other divers that Nitrox allows you to feel less tired and unfocused after a dive. After finally diving with Nitrox, I agree—I felt much more alert and less exhausted than with non-enriched air.
Diving With Rainbow Reef—Again!
When I decided to take the Nitrox course and go diving again, it was obvious to me which company I would choose. I went diving 5 years ago almost to the day with a company called Rainbow Reef out of Key Largo, FL. I had a great time back then and wanted to support them again now.
I had no idea back then that a few years later I would be living and working less than 1 hour away in Miami. I feel really grateful that I live so close to opportunities to dive. Now I don’t have to save the experience for when I travel long distances or internationally. I can dive almost right in my backyard.
I called up to see if Rainbow Reef had any availability on their boats for one weekend in July. They did! And the staffer informed me that the wrecks in particular had a lot of sharks lately. This didn’t mean they’d still be around when I went, but it was definitely on my mind.
I mentioned it to some of the other divers on the boat: “They said there’s been lots of sharks lately.” One of the other divers on the boat seemed not to take my statement too seriously. Maybe they thought I was trying to scare them but divers are notoriously unafraid of sharks.
COVID-19 precautions were still in effect on the boat, requiring divers to wear their masks when not geared up or in the water.
Diving With Sharks
Let me be clear: I did not go on a shark dive. I went diving and there happened to be sharks around. This is an important distinction because tourists will pay lots of money to have highly manufactured shark encounters just for the thrill. I am deeply against this.
While there is no current evidence that “chumming” (putting bait in the water to bring sharks around) disrupts shark health and ecology, I still don’t like the idea of manufacturing encounters especially for the purposes of tourism. I personally would rather not encourage the practice to be done more than it already is.
I’m a fan of authentic encounters. It’s so much more thrilling to me to know that I happened to be in the right place at the right time to have an amazing moment with an animal especially when it’s in its most natural setting and circumstances. Furthermore, the idea of a shark chomping around at bait in the water nearby me doesn’t sound like the safest way to hang out with them.
Worldwide shark attacks on divers are super uncommon. Most people worry about shark attacks or bites and actually have an irrational fear of this. It’s irrational because the number of actual shark attacks, much less deaths, are miniscule to how often we seem to hear about it and worry about it (thanks to Steven Spielberg).
From the International Shark Attack File (Source: Florida Museum) Note that the increased numbers is not due to increases in attacks but better tracking and information sharing about attacks in the last 4 decades!
Attacks on divers from sharks is even lower (24 in the last 10 years) than surface swimmers like bathers and surfers (722 in the last 10 years). To put this in perspective, compare the less than 100 or so shark bites on average each year to the 1000 or so attacks from crocodiles each year!
I really think people should spend less time being scared of sharks and spend more time being absolutely in awe of them. They were around 200 million years before the dinosaurs. Sharks are survivors! This is why I love to see them when I dive.
USS Spiegel Grove Shipwreck
The conditions were perfect on the morning I went to dive. We arrived to the USS Spiegel Grove mooring and the surface was flat, the sun was bright, and the visibility was high. One instructor announced that there were dolphins in the water and another boat mentioned a hammer head was in the area.
I wasn’t about to get my hopes up. But I did ask my guide how much we would be exploring the ship. I dove the Spiegel Grove back in 2016. Back then, I went with the best guide I could possibly ask for. He showed me the dark insides of the ship—where most guides don’t take tourists. “You haven’t seen the Spiegel Grove until you’ve seen snoopy, the ship’s mascot.” To see it you have to go deep inside the ship and we did!
Since I already had that experience, it was okay that my guide this time said he wasn’t going to lead our group to that part of the ship. So I set my expectations right and decided to simply enjoy the dive for what it would be.
We descended down the lead line to the ship.
The Spiegel Grove is a great dive because of all of the ship penetrations you can do. The ship still felt like a ghost ship. The hallways we swam down looked super eerie.
No matter how many I’ve seen at this point, shipwrecks still are pretty cool!
For me, shipwrecks tend to be a little less exciting these days. The reason is that wrecks tend to be at deeper depths and so the colors are not as bright as on a reef dive. You end up with mostly blue hues and dulled colors, at best.
But sometimes the water is clear enough to show off the colors of the reef and fish around the ship. With mild enhancement through editing, you can see in my photos what I could see close up. And it’s so pretty!
Only ten minutes in and this was far from a boring dive but it was about to get even less boring. The guide started clanging on his tank to get our attention. There was a shark in the distance! At first, I thought it might be a hammer head but he made the gesture that it wasn’t.
The shark soon came back around closer and I could see that it was a black tip reef shark. White tips and black tips are really common. They are probably the type that I see the most when I dive. But this one was big—maybe 6 feet or more!
The shark came back around a few times and one time even brought a friend. I rarely get to see sharks this close and this consistently during a dive. They often come through quickly and go away just as fast.
Sharks are more scared of us than I think we are of them! But these ones were attracted to the ship for some reason and seemed to keep returning to scope things out a bit more.
Check out the video I put together of my shark sightings at the USS Spiegel Grove:
Bibb Shipwreck
We were on our way to dive the Duane when the skipper found out there were already too many boats there. He decided to take us to the nearby Bibb wreck instead.
Usually, the Bibb is not divable. Most companies pass it over to dive the more popular Duane—which I dove in 2016. But the Bibb had perfect conditions on the day we went. I was excited to dive a wreck I hadn’t been to before. It’s also a wreck I completely left off the Florida Keys shipwreck list I blogged about 5 years ago.
The Bibb was built in 1937 and submerged 50 years later in 1987. Unlike the upright Duane and Spiegel, the Bibb lies on its side. The vessel sits at about 130 feet deep with the mooring line attached at about 70 feet.
The visibility at the Bibb was incredible—over 100 feet! The staff on the boat were even excited because they never get to dive the Bibb. The water here is known for having extreme currents. The visibility was uniquely good for the site, too.
In general, the wreck was really cool but we were only able to dive it for about 30 minutes. We had a long morning dive and the Bibb is deep. So even with Nitrox our dive time needed to be short to prevent decompression sickness.
The wreck is known for housing 2 bull sharks. After the dive, I found out many of the divers spotted the bull sharks but I did not see them. I was in the first group to reach the Bibb, so I think we brought them out for the other divers!
Bull sharks are one of the 3 sharks (along with great whites and tiger sharks) that are identified in most of the rare shark attacks recorded around the world. Usually attacks are because of mistaken identity—the sharks confuse a human for prey usually at the surface.
While I would have loved seeing the bull sharks, I suppose I’d prefer my shark encounters to be with the less risky reef sharks. At least the reef sharks are less likely to mistaken me for a tasty snack!
Life other than bull sharks on the Bibb!
In Conclusion
I became a certified Nitrox diver and saw lots of sharks on my revisit to the USS Spiegel Grove in the Florida Keys. A special treat was getting to dive the Bibb, a shipwreck rarely visited, when the water had great visibility. I can’t wait to complete a few more dives with Rainbow Reef this year, as I prepaid for them so I can hop on the highway down there anytime I want to go! I love living so close to great diving!
