When you think of great, blue-water diving, you might not immediately think of Texas. Across the state, natural and impounded springs dominate the dive landscape, punctuated by reservoir diving, and none of these will ever make your bucket list. But there’s one special place off the Texas Coast that really is a life-list dive site: The Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. But that’s not all. The “vertical reefs” in the Gulf offer an additional and completely different dive experience. And all of this is waiting for you in deep, indigo waters!
The Flower Garden banks consist of two salt domes, pressed upward by geological forces to within 60 feet of the surface. The upper parts of these are covered by some of the healthiest coral reefs anywhere. How does it happen that healthy reefs live in a place nobody knows about? Well, they’re isolated from the pressures of human development by 110 miles of open ocean.
That’s where the M-V Fling comes into the picture. We depart two or three times each week carrying divers on 2-, or 3-day excursions to world-class ocean diving. The reefs are stunning, and seem to go on and on forever. There are steep walls and valleys in the natural relief of the banks. Deeper (beyond the reach of sport divers) there are brine volcanos, and rivers of super-saline discharges that run down the dome and occasionally pool eerily in basins. It’s a unique place for sure!
