[.ca] Diving Guide to Underwater Florida (ISBN 1878348299)

A Florida Diver's Best Friend:
I bought this book for my fiance as a birthday present and it turned out to be a great find for both of us. The details about each site are very useful and allow us to plan our dive trips with ease. The latitude/longitude coordinates of each site are listed as well, which allows us to find the exact locations (with the aid of GPS). This saves time and energy and ensures that we get the full experience at each site as opposed to spending a lot of time swimming around looking for the reef or wreck. Having focused all of our diving experiences offshore, this book has opened up the area of freshwater and spring diving that we hope to try. If you own your own boat, this book is a must have. Even if you are a shore diver, this book has some great beach sites. We couldn't imagine diving anywhere in Florida without the information provided in this book!!

Useless GPS Coordinates:
Though I am a cavern diver, I have not tried to use this book for this purpose. I have tried to use it for finding dive sites in SE Florida. In this regard, the book is nearly useless. Many (if not most) of the GPS coordinates provided are just plain wrong. Obviously the author is relying on outdated (at best) or totally unreliable third party information. I frankly doubt that the author has ever been to most of the SE Florida open water dive sites written up in this book. This book is a waste of money for open water divers.

This book is an excellent guide to finding Florida's springs:
If you live in Florida, buy this book to see what's in your back yard. If you're coming to visit Florida, buy this book to find the unexplored Florida. It includes directions and descriptions to many spots in Florida that most people don't know about. A great guide to finding Florida's freshwater springs, wrecks, and reefs. Also find out more info about diving Florida at underwaterflorida.com This is a book you can't live without!

Pretty Good- Wish the GPS numbers were better:
I bought this book as a way of finding new GPS coordinates in the Tampa area to dive. This book was pretty good, with a great description of each site. However, the GPS coordinates are pretty much run of the mill numbers, you'll find every local charter dive boat and fishing boat there, but not a bad place to start. Where the book starts to fall apart though is when it starts telling you, Place X is 1.7 miles on a 335 course north of point Y. That info. does you no good. When you are looking for a ledge the size of a small car, close doesn't count. Also, it seemed like all the more interesting sites were given in Loran numbers. Anyone who knows GPS knows that you can't accurately convert Loran to GPS, so those numbers are worthless for all but the 3 people in the world still using Loran. Overall, a great book for people just learning a new area to fish or dive, but expect everyone in that area to have that number. Good book with good info. For those looking for more GPS numbers, try nauticalcharts.com... VERY GOOD MAPS.

A must have for Florida Divers:
If you dive and live in florida YOU MUST OWN THIS BOOK. There is no better diving guide around. Hundreds of sites, most with GPS coordinates. Inside this book you'll find the hidden spots some of the locals don't even know about.