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Alert Diver is the dive industry’s leading publication. Featuring DAN’s core content of dive safety, research, education and medical information, each issue is a must-read reference, archived and shared by passionate scuba enthusiasts. In addition, Alert Diver showcases fascinating dive destinations and marine environmental topics through images from the world’s greatest underwater photographers and stories from the most experienced and eloquent dive journalists in the business.
Alert Diver is the dive industry’s leading publication. Featuring DAN’s core content of dive safety, research, education and medical information, each issue is a must-read reference, archived and shared by passionate scuba enthusiasts. In addition, Alert Diver showcases fascinating dive destinations and marine environmental topics through images from the world’s greatest underwater photographers and stories from the most experienced and eloquent dive journalists in the business.
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An aerial view reveals the relatively large landmass<br />
of Key Largo, the largest of the Florida Keys.<br />
A LEGACY OF MARINE CONSERVATION<br />
TEXT AND PHOTOS<br />
BY STEPHEN FRINK<br />
Spring Break 1978 was one of the singular<br />
events that shaped my life. I was living in<br />
Colorado, perfectly happy with my Rocky<br />
Mountain high, and working in a photo lab<br />
to make a living. I had stayed in touch with<br />
a swim-team buddy from high school who was living<br />
in Key Largo, Fla. He worked as a treasure diver, and<br />
back then divers could still find booty and artifacts on<br />
the wrecks of the Spanish galleons that ran aground off<br />
the Upper Keys in 1733. I took a dive holiday to Key<br />
Largo that year, found I really enjoyed the diving and<br />
started thinking that I could make a living there. Lots of<br />
tourists were diving John Pennekamp Coral Reef State<br />
Park, and I thought if I were to open a little shop to rent<br />
underwater cameras and process E-6 slide film, maybe I<br />
could get by and enjoy the lifestyle for a year or two.<br />
I moved to Key Largo in November of that year. It<br />
certainly never occurred to me then that this little island<br />
would be where I would meet my wife, where we would<br />
raise our daughter and where I would still be a member<br />
of the dive community four decades later. Some things<br />
have changed over the years, but the diving that enticed<br />
me — and makes Key Largo one of the world’s most<br />
popular dive destinations — remains constant.<br />
82 | FALL <strong>2017</strong>
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