A Private Boat to the Reef, and the Guide Swims With You

The cap of six is the reason the rest of it works. There is no roll call, no waiting on a larger group, and nobody aboard you did not arrive with. The operator's own wording is that you will not be sharing your trip with strangers, and the listing prices the charter by the boat.

One consequence is worth planning around. Everyone who gets in the water has to know how to swim. That is the operator's wording, and it is written per guest rather than per party, so it is a line each person who plans to get wet has to clear on their own. What it does not ask for is strength: flotation devices come with the gear, and the guide is in the water with you.

Snorkel gear, flotation devices, reef-safe sunscreen, towels and a cooler of ice and bottled water are all included. Gratuities for the crew are excluded.

All three options are listed as John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park trips, and that is the name everyone uses out here. The park's own management plan draws the line closer in. Its submerged portion runs three miles into the Atlantic, and the reefs past that line are federal, managed as the Key Largo Existing Management Area inside the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The reef the statue stands on is one of them. That line sits on a chart, and a snorkeler crosses it without noticing.

The operator calls this one of the most abundant marine life locations on the reef and puts the count at 1,400 species of corals, plants and tropical fish. That number is real, and it has travelled. It comes from a 1969 survey that counted every marine plant and animal across a small stretch of the wider Florida reef tract, invertebrates and algae included. Counting inside its own boundary, the park's management plan identifies thirty species of stony coral and twenty-four of octocoral, and a three-year survey of its patch reefs logged a hundred and nine fish species.

Turtles and spotted eagle rays both turn up in the operator's own trip photographs, which is a fair guide to what is around without being a promise that any of it shows up on your morning.

What is dependable is the depth. The reef here sits shallow enough to work from the surface, with no tanks involved, which is why a three-hour trip can spend half of itself face-down.

Three options sit behind one listing, and the differences matter more than the names suggest.

• Snorkel the Reef. Three hours, one reef location, USD 595 for the boat. Departures at 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.
• Christ of the Abyss. Three hours, USD 595, same departure times. This is the one that visits the nine-foot bronze figure on Key Largo Dry Rocks, a casting of Guido Galletti's 1954 original, commissioned by the Italian industrialist and sport diver Egidio Cressi, given to the Underwater Society of America, lowered into place in August 1965 and dedicated the following June. It stands in about twenty-five feet of water, and the operator puts the top of it eleven feet under, which is why a novice snorkeler can reach it from the surface.
• Snorkel TWO Reefs. Three and a half hours, USD 695, leaving 8:30 am or 1:00 pm. Two reef locations, and the listing states plainly that this one does not visit the statue.

So the statue and the second reef do not come together. Pick the statue option if the figure is the reason you are going.

One more thing the listing name does not deliver. All three bookable options are reef snorkeling trips. The operator does run sandbar charters, in Key Largo and in Islamorada, but those are separate bookings and neither is what this page links to.