Key West Diving: The Reefs Still Under the 1997 Rules, the Vandenberg and the Dry Tortugas Permits

Key West’s reef dives sit in state waters, where the 2025 sanctuary rules were blocked

The reef line southwest of Key West carries three Sanctuary Preservation Areas of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary: Sand Key, Rock Key and Eastern Dry Rocks. The sanctuary’s buoy file lists 26 mooring buoys at Sand Key Reef, 12 at Eastern Dry Rocks and 11 at Rock Key. NOAA’s zone data, revised on 28 April 2026, gives all three the same attribute: within state waters, yes. That one field decides which rulebook a dive boat is under.

On 17 January 2025 NOAA published the final rule of its Restoration Blueprint, 90 FR 6104, rewriting the sanctuary’s regulations. The rule set its own condition. It would take effect after 45 days of continuous session of Congress, but if Florida’s governor certified any part unacceptable, that part “will not take effect in State waters of the sanctuary”.

On 3 March 2025 Governor Ron DeSantis wrote to the Secretary of Commerce and did exactly that. He certified that the designation documents and final rule “are unacceptable, and therefore, shall not take effect in the area of the Sanctuary lying within the seaward boundary of the State of Florida”, and added that prior rules and management plans “will remain in place”.

So the water off Key West runs on two sets of paper. Past the state line, the 2025 rules apply; Keys Weekly reported in March 2026 that NOAA treats them as in force in federal waters since 5 March 2025. Inside the line, the 1997 text still governs. Published figures for how the sanctuary divides between the two disagree with each other, so no share is given here.

One oddity catches anyone who looks the rules up. NOAA’s regulations page sends readers to 15 CFR 922 Subpart P, and the electronic code, current to 22 September 2026, still prints the 1997-era text with only a pointer to the 2025 amendment. The rule promised a Federal Register notice announcing its effective date. A search of the register on 24 September 2026 found none.

Rock Key was cut from the 2025 rule and is still a Key West preservation area

The 2025 rule did not only tighten. In its answers to public comments, NOAA listed five marine zones it was eliminating “due to resource condition changes”, and two of them were preservation areas: Rock Key and French Reef. Removing them, NOAA wrote, “removes restrictions on fishing in these areas”. Read on its own, the federal rule opens Rock Key to fishing.

At Key West the removal never landed. The sanctuary’s page of Sanctuary Preservation Areas still lists Rock Key SPA, and the 2026 zone data describes it at 0.104 square miles, in state waters and inside the Key West National Wildlife Refuge. Sand Key covers 0.448 square miles and Eastern Dry Rocks 0.142 in the same data. Southeast of town, the Western Sambo Ecological Reserve, 11.6 square miles with 22 buoys, is also filed in state waters and runs under the same 1997 prohibitions.

Inside the three preservation areas, the 1997 list applies. No discharge except cooling water or engine exhaust. No fishing. No possessing, moving, taking, damaging or spearing any coral, invertebrate, fish, algae, seagrass or shell, living or dead. No touching or standing on coral, living or dead. A boat carrying fish caught elsewhere must stow them and keep moving, because in a preservation area in state waters the vessel has to be in continuous transit.

Sand Key keeps one exception the 2025 rule deleted wherever it reached. The 1997 text allows “catch and release fishing by trolling” in four preservation areas, Sand Key among them, and the 2025 rule struck that line for all four. NOAA’s zone entry for Sand Key still carries it: fishing is prohibited “except for Sand Key where catch and release trolling is allowed”. A boat trolling a catch-and-release line through Sand Key is within the rules that apply there.

The 2027 anchoring ban skips all three Key West preservation areas

The 2025 rule’s summary is blunt: “anchoring is prohibited in all SPAs.” NOAA delayed that single provision until 19 January 2027 to finish a mooring buoy plan and install new buoys. For Key West that sentence is wrong. The sanctuary’s own SPA page says that in 2027, anchoring of any kind will be prohibited in SPAs “except for Hen and Chickens, Cheeca Rocks, Newfound Harbor Key, Eastern Dry Rocks, Rock Key, and Sand Key”. All three Key West areas are on that list.

What applies instead is the 1997 anchoring clause, and it is more specific than most summaries of it. No anchor, chain or rope may touch living or dead coral or any attached organism. “When anchoring dive boats, the first diver down must inspect the anchor”, and no further diving may take place until it is placed correctly. Anchoring instead of mooring when a mooring buoy is available is itself prohibited, so a free buoy is not optional.

A short run up the Keys, the picture changes. NOAA’s zone data puts the Looe Key preservation area in federal waters, and its entry carries the note that in 2027 anchoring by any means will be prohibited. The Key West Nursery Restoration Area, 47.6 acres of active coral nursery, is also federal and is transit only: no stopping, no anchoring, no fishing. A boat may cross it and may not stay.

Western Dry Rocks closes to fishing from April to July, not to Key West divers

West of Sand Key lies a Key West reef with a calendar attached. Florida Administrative Code rule 68B-6.004, in force since 1 April 2021, draws a box of state waters by four corner coordinates and states that “fishing and possession of fish are prohibited within Western Dry Rocks” from 1 April through 31 July. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission describes a one-square-mile area about 10 miles southwest of Key West, where snapper, grouper and permit gather to spawn.

The rule says nothing about diving. A diver who takes nothing is outside it, and the sanctuary buoy file lists eight mooring buoys on the site. A spearfisher is inside it: the rule’s stowage clause names spear gear, and on a boat crossing the box “appropriately stowed” means spear shafts may not be inserted into any spearing device. The closure also carries an end date. It “shall only remain in effect through March 31, 2028” unless the Commission renews or expands it.

The federal rule would have gone further. The 2025 text created a Western Dry Rocks Wildlife Management Area requiring “continuous transit without interruption and no anchor” from 1 April to 31 July, which would have ended stopping a boat there to dive. NOAA’s own answer to comments conceded “this area is in State waters”, and the same answer gives the closing date as July 3 where the regulation table says July 31. The April 2026 zone data lists no Western Dry Rocks zone at all.

The Vandenberg added Key West divers instead of taking them off the reef

The big wreck off Key West is a former missile tracking ship. The state wildlife commission’s artificial reef database files the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg as a 522-foot ship of 13,300 tons, deployed on 27 May 2009 in 145 feet of water with 100 feet of relief, and marks its jurisdiction as State. NOAA gives her length as 520 feet and calls her the largest vessel sunk as an artificial reef in the sanctuary. Two mooring buoys mark the site.

The sinking came with an ecological promise attached. Before permitting it, NOAA commissioned a study, and the hypothesis was that a new wreck would draw divers away from the natural reefs. The study compared May 2007 to April 2008 with July 2009 to June 2010, using dive shop logbooks and 72 days of on-water counts in each period.

The result ran the other way. Charter dives by scuba divers rose by 92.1 percent, and scuba diving on the surrounding natural reefs by 23.5 percent, or 5,214 dives, while diving on artificial reefs rose by 442 percent. The natural reefs’ share of use fell from 67 to 46.5 percent, but in NOAA’s words the hypothesis that the Vandenberg would reduce pressure on them “was not supported”. NOAA credits the Spiegel Grove, sunk off Key Largo in 2002, with benefits to the economy and the reef.

The Vandenberg has neighbors, and the state line runs between them. The commission’s database files Joe’s Tug, a 90-foot tugboat deployed on 21 January 1989 in 65 feet, as State. The Cayman Salvage Master, a 187-foot former US Army minelayer deployed on 30 April 1985 in 92 feet, is filed as Federal; the sanctuary’s buoy file calls the same wreck the Cayman Salvor. Two wrecks on one morning can sit under two sanctuary rulebooks. Our wreck diving guide covers other coasts built around sunk steel.

Key West dive-flag distances come from a Florida statute that asks for reasonable effort

The flag rule on the state-water reefs is Florida Statutes section 327.331, and it is worded more carefully than the usual summary. Every diver must prominently display a divers-down warning device: a red symbol with a white diagonal stripe, at least 20 by 24 inches when flown from a vessel and 12 by 12 inches when displayed from the water. On a boat it goes at the highest point, and it comes down once every diver is aboard. A divers-down buoy may not be displayed on board.

The distances carry a qualifier the retellings drop. On open water, divers “must make reasonable efforts to stay within 300 feet” of the device, and a boat operator “must make a reasonable effort to maintain a distance of at least 300 feet”. A boat that does come within 300 feet must “proceed no faster than is necessary to maintain headway and steerageway”. In rivers, inlets and navigation channels, both distances drop to 100 feet. A violation is a noncriminal infraction.

The sanctuary adds its own layer on each side of the line. The 1997 text still bars a boat from exceeding 4 knots, or making a wake, within 100 yards of a red and white divers-down flag, “or the blue and white ‘alpha’ flag in Federal waters”. The 2025 text drops the reasonable-effort wording altogether: divers “must stay within 300 feet” of the flag, and boats must hold idle speed and no wake inside that distance.

Fish feeding is banned on both sides, by different instruments. Florida rule 68B-5.005, in force since 1 January 2002, says “no diver shall engage in the practice of fish feeding” and bars any vessel for hire from carrying passengers to feed fish or watch it done in state waters. The 2025 sanctuary rule prohibits attracting or feeding fish, “including sharks”, from any vessel or while diving.

Dry Tortugas diving from Key West needs a private boat for the tanks, and a park permit

Almost 70 miles west of Key West, according to the National Park Service, lie the seven islands of Dry Tortugas National Park. The practical catch for divers is stated on the park’s own page: the ferry and seaplane cannot carry compressed canisters, so anyone planning to scuba dive must arrive by their own boat or a charter vessel. Visitors who take the ferry can snorkel. They cannot bring a tank.

The boat then needs paper, and the park’s boating page, updated on 31 August 2026, does not mention it. Rule 36 CFR 7.27(h) requires a permit from the superintendent “for all non-commercial vessels for which occupants are engaged in recreational activities”, naming mooring buoys, snorkeling and diving. The same section defines a permit as an authorization “in writing or orally (e.g., via radio or telephonically)”, and transit without stopping needs none. For the park’s permitting process, the sanctuary tells boaters to hail the park on VHF channels 10 and 16.

Inside the park’s Research Natural Area, 46 square statute miles in its northwest portion, anchoring and fishing are both prohibited and boats must use the designated mooring buoys, which the park limits to two hours of day use. Overnight anchoring is allowed only on sand within one nautical mile of the Garden Key light. Spearfishing and lobster harvest are banned park-wide, and guided diving for a fee needs a commercial authorization.

North of the park, the sanctuary’s Tortugas North Ecological Reserve needs a free permit, requested at least 72 hours ahead, valid up to two weeks. Diving is allowed from its buoys and anchoring is not; boats may not stop in Tortugas South. NOAA’s zone data puts part of Tortugas North in state waters, and the 1997 text that governs that part also requires a radio or telephone call to sanctuary staff 30 minutes to 6 hours before entering and on leaving. The permit page no longer mentions it.

Weather is the other permit. The park warns that a tropical storm can arise any day of the year, and that summer brings the calmer, rainier months while winter brings high winds. The National Hurricane Center puts the Atlantic hurricane season at 1 June to 30 November, with the peak on 10 September and most activity between mid-August and mid-October. Calm crossings and storm season overlap.

Key West’s Eastern Dry Rocks kept outplanted elkhorn through the 2023 heat, not staghorn

The reefs off Key West reached the disease front late. The sanctuary’s history of stony coral tissue loss disease records it in the Lower Florida Keys in spring 2018 and “beyond Key West” by the winter of 2018 to 2019, after isolated cases near Virginia Key in fall 2014. NOAA says it affects nearly half of the stony coral species on Florida’s reef. Dry Tortugas held out longest: the park found lesions on 11 colonies on 29 May 2021.

Then came the heat of 2023. After it, a NOAA cruise surveyed 64 locations at five of the seven Mission: Iconic Reefs sites, and Eastern Dry Rocks off Key West was one of them. Preliminary data released on 15 February 2024 found less than 22 percent of about 1,500 outplanted staghorn corals alive, all of them at the two northernmost reefs surveyed. Live outplanted elkhorn turned up at only three sites, and Eastern Dry Rocks was one.

Set expectations by that. NOAA’s zone entries for the three Key West preservation areas say they once held thickets of elkhorn and now contain “a high abundance of large ESA-listed star corals, remnant populations of ESA-listed pillar corals and a diverse assemblage of other boulder and plating coral species”. The same entries call all three important sites for “ongoing restoration of ESA-listed elkhorn and staghorn corals”, so much of the branching coral is restoration work. The Miami guide follows the same disease back to where it was first reported.

Six Key West dive businesses in the registers, three of them filed up the Keys

The Key West operator list holds 6 businesses. Five are published by SSI in its register of affiliated training centers, read on 20 September 2026, and one, Southpoint Divers, is a Green Fins digital member, read on 14 August 2026 and self-evaluated rather than assessed in person. All six publish a website.

The register’s town field says something about where Key West diving is sold. Of the five SSI entries, only Dive Key West and Finz Dive Center are filed in Key West. Captain Hook’s Looe Key Reef Adventures is filed in Big Pine Key, Looe Key Reef Resort in Ramrod Key, and Mote Marine Laboratory in Summerland. Where a business is filed is not where it dives, but two of them carry Looe Key in their names, and Looe Key sits in federal waters, where the 2027 anchoring ban applies.

SSI rates Captain Hook’s for Extended Range and Looe Key Reef Resort for Freediving, and it publishes the same website for Captain Hook’s and Dive Key West. A rating is a listing, not evidence that a course runs this season. These are membership registers rather than licenses; which registers can be read sets out what each one returns.

One number is worth carrying whoever you book. Divers Alert Network runs an emergency line on +1-919-684-9111, and its own guidance is to call 911 first in a life-threatening emergency, or get the injured person to the nearest medical facility, and to contact DAN after that. Cover for treatment is a separate purchase, which is what the dive insurance comparison is for.