Panama City Beach boasts a vast array of artificial coral material. Material options include old piers, bridge pilings and custom-designed reef habitat. While these sites are unlikely to attract divers by themselves most of them will attract divers if they are surrounded by reef module-enclosed ships.
The SS Tarpon is a historic shipwreck. She sank in 1937 and took the lives of 18 crew members, including her captain – Willis G. Barrow. Remarkably, one crew member, Adley Baker, survived by swimming the 9 miles to shore in gale-force winds. It was a 25-hour ordeal, but he lived to tell the tale.
The Black Bart is a 180' vessel sunk in 1993 as an artificial reef. Christened Vulcano del Golfo in 1977, the site commemorates Charles’ Black Bart’ Bartholomew, Navy Supervisor of Salvage Captain, who died while diving off Panama City Beach in 1990. His exploits include heading up the recovery of the Space Shuttle Challenger and leading the Navy’s cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which is poetic since the Black Bart is an oil rig supply ship.
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The Grey Ghost is an extended offshore dive, taking 6-8 hours to reach. She’s only a 105' vessel, but what makes this dive spectacular is the vast assortment of aquatic life. She came to rest at the edge of a natural reef that was augmented with drops of fiberglass boats and scrap steel, making this spot an ideal fish habitat.
We offer a variety of classes for people with wide ranges of experience to get their scuba diving certification.
A 184' long Navy minesweeper tender with a 33' beam sunk in 1987 as a dive salvage training site. Storms broke the bow, and it lay off the port side of the wreck. The rest of the boat remains intact and sits upright, rising 20' off the bottom.
Scuba Dive Panama City Beach can take you to famous watery shipwrecks, including Black Bart, or for beachside snorkeling at St. Andrews State Park. At high tide, the park's remarkable rocky jetties allow you to see ocean creatures up close, such as octopus and redfish.
Never hold your breath
As every good entry-level dive student knows, this is the most important rule of scuba. And for good reason — breath holding underwater can result in serious injury and even death. In accordance with Boyle's law, the air in a diver's lungs expands during ascent and contracts during descent.
As you become a qualified scuba diver, you learn the basics of an essential scuba system. A cylinder, weights, an exposure suit, regulators, BCD gauge and timing device, mask and fins are the bare essentials.