You don't often eat Chicken Parmesan and then meet a turtle. This happened to me recently, but it…read morewas a painted sea turtle on a wall who told me his name was Bob. Well .. I pretended he told me his name was Bob, and I pretended that Bob told me to enter the store. Pretend or not, that turtle drove me to the store. Fortunately, I listened to Bob. This is despite not being a diver. But I am a snorkeler! In fact, the next time someone asks me my hobby, I'm going to say, "I'm a snorkeler." I have never heard that before. I bought some snorkel equipment and headed to Florida Springs. You know what kind of fish I saw there? Me neither. I just know they were little colorful ones. I also saw many of Bob's friends, many of which said hello. As far as the shopping experience goes, A+. Very friendly and knowledgeable staff. Highly recommended--even if you only snorkel.

We shopped around and settled on APD. Great selection, top-notch rental equipment, easygoing and…read moreexpert staff are interested in making sure everything is a perfect fit. No pressure or upsell. Regarding instruction, Matt is an exceptional instructor. You will be impressed.

Want to learn to Scuba Dive? Need a Refresher Course? This…read moreis the only place I recommend. Fintastic Diving Adventures is an amazing Scuba Diving company that specializes in classes, certifications and trips for the whole family. I highly recommend them. Though based in Jacksonville, FL, they regularly hold classes in Atlanta. I've been scuba certified for over 30 years but I took a refresher course with Fintastic after being away from the sport for a while. The owner, Saffron, also taught my children to dive and we have traveled with her on more than 10 trips. Each one was organized, professionally done and tons of FUN. You can rent her gear for classes and trips or she can hook you up with your own gear at reasonable prices. Well known and respected in the diving industry, Saffron is a wonderful teacher with over 6,000 dives. Sitting on multiple Scuba Safety Councils, she is the person that professional divers recommend when asked for the name of a scuba instructor. Saffron's background in marine biology is a great help in identifying wildlife above and below the water. To top it all off.. Saffron is a nice person and I think nice matters. Apart from the group trips she arranges, she often accompanies private groups who want their own dive master with them on their trip. Check out their website !

Saffron is wonderful teaching kids and adults about marine life. Her background in marine life is…read morejust an add on bonus to your whole diving experience. Friendly service, very convenient and great pricing! Would recommend to all my family and friends.

Scuba Cove Adventures provides local JAX offshore dive trips that operate from the Palm Cove…read moreMarina. I've enjoyed my Atlantic Beach Local Reefs & Wrecks dive trips with boat captain and dive guide Chris. You can count on always having great days out on the local wrecks and reefs during his 2- Or 3-Tank, offshore Boat Dives. SCA prices are reasonable and priced according to # of tanks. Note: You must be an Advanced Diver to go to depths of 100 plus feet. Pretty cool that SCA Rates also include fishing license and lobster permits, however, Rates do not include dive gear or tanks (BYOG - bring your own gear or rent from one of the many local dive shops). Although, one day trips accommodate up to 12 divers, I've typically gone out with 8 divers on these trips - SCA has a Dive Master on board for all dive trips. SCA is a decent outfit if you're interested in booking a local offshore dive trip.

Great customer service and terrific, highly professional experience end-to-end…read more Rob was great to work with in scheduling the certification training and supporting equipment. Chris and Caleb were top-notch dive masters, giving personal attention at every turn. They clearly cared about the success and learnings of every single participant in the dive.

I would not recommend this shop to anyone who is looking for training or certification. I recently…read moretook the open water course here and the amount of things they hid from you until you paid could fill a book. Firstly, this is a dive shop in Jacksonville but the training does not take place in the ocean but a hundred miles away from the shop past gainsville for which you have to provide your own transportation, accommodation, and transport all of the rental equipment as well. Next, the amount of people that they allow to take this course at a time is way too many. For my open water course there was one instructor and ten students. 90% of each dive we were forced to be underwater, cold, not doing anything while the instructor made his rounds to the other 9 students. Not only was the instructor split between the open water students, but he was also actively training advanced students as well on the same days. This means the open water students were constantly waiting for the instructor to be done with the advanced students before we could get our training and go on our dives. What could have been done in 3 hours was stretched to 8 hour days because of the dive shop's greed for more customers. The instructor himself did seem like a good guy but the organization, the lack of shared information, and the fact that twice as many people were allowed to sign up as there should've been made this an awful experience where I was wishing I had gone with any other shop.

Thank you Matt, for the amazing dive at Devil's Den Spring. I had a fantastic time exploring the…read morecaves etc. I will definitely be back with my son and diving buddies soon to share in this awesome experience. Thanks again Mike Hollis

From the owner: Veteran owned scuba diving school. We provide PADI certification classes from Open Water through…read moreRescue and many specialty courses like Nitrox, Deep, and Wreck Divers. We specialize in individual and small group classes, providing the attention every student needs to be successful in their scuba diving adventures. We also do scuba diving trips around Florida on group schedules as well as private and semi private trips at your convenience.

As a certified NAUI/CMAS/SSI Advanced SCUBA Diver, I am pretty "particular" with the Dive Shops I…read moredo business with as well as the Dive Training & Excursion Programs - for me it's all about the first-rate quality "experience" and safe/comprehensive instruction rather than the "product-push" centric focus shops I hate having to deal with (kind of like buying cars). So when I connected with Bil Gates (Bil it's one "L" real name no kidding) at Scuba Rite who is both Manager and Instructor of the local JAX Scuba Rite Shop off Belfort Rd, I was so pleased to know that he "gets it" and "gets me!" I love that Scuba Rite is very quality training focused and makes this the primary element of their business model. They are moving away from equipment sales and laser-focusing on their broad training curriculum of Courses towards Diver 1-4, Master Diver, Nitrox Diver and Instructor Diver Level Certifications. Moreover, Scuba Rite provides customers with a "try SCUBA" experience (single and couples) which allows first-timers to "get your feet wet" and safely explore the underwater world without full-certification. IMO, this is a great progression towards the full certification program (Diver 1). The best part of what Scuba Rite offers is the fabulous locations that they use for their training and excursion dives: Troy Springs, Fanning Springs, Blue Springs, Devils Den Springs and my personal favorite Ginnie Springs (where I completed my NAUI Openwater 1 Rec Diver Certification). I highly recommend Scuba Rite if you are looking for Dive Training & Excursion Programs that are first-rate in "experience" and instruction!

This was my first scuba experience ever and it was an awesome one. Bill Gates is an excellent…read moreteacher who know his stuff well. Not only is he very familiar with the dive spot(he's been diving there for over 20 years) but he definitey made the experience more comfortable and easy to learn. He is flexible with the schedule and takes his time going over every skill appropriately. I would highly recommend to anyone in the area.

Terrible service didn't know how to do anything right didn't have proper tools I do not recommend…read moreat all!!! Planning on suing this company absolutely disappointed

From the owner: Marine Specialty Contractor…read more Logan Diving & Salvage has been actively engaged in servicing the commercial diving needs of the maritime communities of the Americas for over 70 years. Safety, integrity, experience and client satisfaction are the benchmarks by which we measure our continued success.

Malcolm and Amanda are great instructors. They provided excellent service during the certification…read moreof my daughter as a Rescue Scuba Diver. They are very knowledgeable and professional. I will be using them again in the future for more of my daughter's certifications.

Had a truly great experience with Malcolm and Shaw. They were both very experienced, patient, and…read moreinformative. The class was fun but I learned a ton throughout each day. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to get into scuba or advance their skills.

Instructors- There are a couple of decent instructors. The others don't care at all about their…read morejobs or the education of their students. You would be better off taking the classroom days for diesel engine mechanics and underwater welding and just teaching yourself with textbooks online. Other important classes will be substituted with old episodes of Modern Marvels down on YouTube if the instructor doesn't feel like teaching, which is understandable. It probably gets pretty hard teaching all day when you're drinking four lokos out of a Gatorade bottle. Don't worry though, you can fail the final exam 4 times and still graduate. You don't even need to show up sober. Facilities- The deepwater training center at Ocala is an incredible facility and probably exactly what you picture in your head when you imagine dive school. Unfortunately you only spend two weeks there. The rest of the four and a half months is spent in a cramped school under a bridge in a dangerous part of Jacksonville. Hope you have a small class, or else you can look forward to putting three to four people to a cheap folding plastic table. Oh, I almost forgot. Every Friday your dive time/education is cut short so you can walk around the grounds picking up cigarette butts, picking weeds, sweeping floors and mopping. If you dare to think that's the job of the maintenance crew your tuition pays for you can look forward to being rolled back to another class in 30 days, or being used as a free form of labor for several hours after the school day digging holes, doing more cleaning, or any other task the administration doesn't want to pay somebody to do. Dorms/barracks- The school says they model the rooms to prepare students for life offshore. That is a pretty genius way to spend the bare minimum on living space for adults spending over $30k for a lackluster product. You can look forward to living in a cramped cubicle with 4 other grown men. Prepare yourself for the stench of dozens of filthy feet and tons of unwashed underwear. You can also look forward to having your dive/classroom time interrupted if one person in your class fails their daily room inspection. If you want to spend over $30k on a school that provides a subpar product, instructors that belittle their students and talk to them like they are children this is the school for you. If that's not what you're looking for, go to DIT in Seattle. I wish I would have.

I am currently a student at CDA. I will say looking at my choice of school I would not do it again…read moreever. There is an extremely large turnover of instructors, I have only been here 4 months and have seen at least 5 leave and new ones arrive. But dont think thats the only downfall of this institution they do whats cheapest for them the pictures and glamorous clear water shots are not what you will experience. They front their deep water facility at OCALA florida which is where you will spend only 2 weeks of your 5 months there. You will spend your time diving in 20ft of water in the trout river which is extremely dark and murky. Not only will you dive in this but every morning you will get up around 530am to come and swim in the cold water while having instructors yell at you if you have problems fighting the rough current. Of your 30000 dollar tuition you will recieve only 1 week of topside welding and then maybe two months later you will take your underwater welding test. This test gives you 16 tries to get it right with no prior welding practice up to that point. also with your tuition they fund their racing team and their huge propaganda campaign. They will Spam you with ads that if you come here you will instantly regret. If someone offered me my money back to leave this place I would. Do not believe their lies. You will regret ever coming to CDA technical insititute. especially once you spend 5 months living in sub par facilities. They dont care about you only your money. They will lie to you to get you to stay and nothing is ever done

We absolutely loved this tour and experience. Max 6 people on a boat, we were 4 and no one else…read morebooked so it was totally like a private tour. Price is worth it for the comfort and private experience. Owner is totally chill, surfer guy vibes, very friendly and very knowledgeable about sea life and dolphins with years of experience. You can tell he loves what he does and is passionate about his business. He brought us out around until we found a huge swarm of dolphins and we just followed them the whole time. There was a tonnnnn of them. Didn't see manatees this time but I don't think they are as common as the dolphins as that's where the dolphins live and reside. It was a great way to start your morning and my 8 year old son absolutely loved it. We don't support seeing dolphins in captivity and he also explained how horrible it is having them in captivity. This is a great way to experience seeing dolphins without the exploitation of dolphins. Highly recommend and would absolutely do this again if I came to town again.

I cannot say enough good about our tour. Captain Dustin was so personable and knowlegable. He…read moreinteracted so well with the kids and made the tour not only educational (which it was - VERY!) but so fun too. We saw MANY dolphins and he could spot them far off and would steer right over there and point out where we should look. He has a good sense of humor is professional in conduct and in speech, which I appreciated very much too. If you could give a score of 10 star, I would definitely give it 10!