A Steward Diving into Journey

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“To a diver, there’s nothing extra necessary than a crystal-clear sea backside,” mentioned Spencer Slate. “Each diver is an ecologist. We love the ocean.”

Spencer, who owns Captain Slate’s SCUBA Adventures within the Higher Florida Keys neighborhood of Tavernier, often takes dive teams out on his vessels for the Keys’ Coral Restoration Basis’s excursions to its coral nurseries. He additionally conducts lectures about Florida’s Coral Reef on the College of Miami.

Spencer’s daughter Sky has adopted in his footsteps to turn into concerned within the dive enterprise.

Spencer taught the primary schooling course at Key Largo’s Reef Environmental Training Basis, the place he’s a former board member. He’s additionally been a member of the Florida Keys Nationwide Marine Sanctuary’s advisory committee and helped to advertise catch-and-release fishing within the early Nineteen Nineties.

His dive store is a SCUBA teacher coaching facility, certifying for the Nationwide Affiliation of Underwater Instructors, Scuba Diving Worldwide and Scuba Educators Worldwide. One of many first devoted to diving within the Keys, the store additionally affords a wide range of lessons, licensed by the Florida Division of Training, for novice divers.

Spencer moved to the Keys from Jacksonville, Florida, the place he was a highschool trainer for six years. Right now, he’s identified each for his adventurous underwater feedings of marine creatures and as an environmental activist.

Inducted into the Diving Tools and Advertising Affiliation Corridor of Fame in 2019 and the Worldwide SCUBA Diving Corridor of Fame in 2004, he’s additionally an authorized Notary Public who conducts underwater weddings.

Keys Voices: When did you first come to the Florida Keys and why?

coral spawn Florida Keys

Spencer Slate watches a boulder coral launch gametes off Key Largo within the Florida Keys Nationwide Marine Sanctuary throughout a once-a-year mass-spawning ritual. (Photograph by Frazier Nivens, Florida Keys Information Bureau)

Spencer Slate: I fell in love with the Keys after I got here in 1972 to dive. In 1978, I opened Captain Slate’s Atlantis Dive Middle, now Captain Slate’s SCUBA Adventures.

KV: What elements of the Keys atmosphere or lifestyle matter most to you? 

SS: The atmosphere is my whole residing. With no stunning ocean and all its stunning corals, fishes and clear water, there can be no diving anyplace within the Keys. Our water is our best asset and we should shield it in each approach.

KV: Who or what impressed you to turn into keen about respecting and defending the Keys’ pure world?

SS: I grew up watching “Sea Hunt” within the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and was impressed to be a diver. I began diving in July 1963. I moved to Florida after which later, in ’78, got here to Key Largo to open up my dive store.

KV: How does that zeal affect your work or career?

Scuba Diving Santa Florida Keys

Spencer Slate, garbed as Santa Claus, gives underwater vacation picture alternatives every year as a fundraiser for a neighborhood youngsters’s charity. (Photograph by Frazier Nivens, Florida Keys Information Bureau)

SS: My work is taking folks out to see the gorgeous reef and all the gorgeous critters on it. I do that just about day by day.

KV: What are a number of the methods, personally or by means of your work, that you just join with and/or assist shield the native atmosphere and distinctive way of life?

SS: I join by means of my data of many years of diving, particularly right here within the Keys, and thru my involvement within the dive trade to convey folks right here to dive. I additionally do seminars and lectures, and train throughout the nation to attach folks with the atmosphere and our distinctive way of life that we’ve got within the Keys.

KV: What retains you energized, challenged and targeted in your path?

SS: Seeing the ocean and going out on the ocean, and constantly diving and interacting with the creatures and the reef. Each time my face goes underwater, for the primary prompt I’m in one other world. As people we will’t breathe water, so we come again up and get one other tank.

KV: What do you hope your optimistic environmental actions will accomplish?

Family in Florida Keys

Spencer enjoys spending time along with his daughter Sky and granddaughter Addy.

SS: I’ve been requested to do environmental lectures at faculties and faculties throughout the nation and at dive exhibits, and I’ve written many papers and articles for newspapers and dive magazines. I’ve helped restore our reef from harm from a sea urchin die-off, from coral bleaching and from air pollution.

KV: What message would you like your actions and instance to speak to folks you encounter?

SS: Protect and shield our oceans. We might be advisors and watch-keepers of the ocean. We should proceed to take folks out, present them, problem them to come back out, to come back to our lectures, and to truly exit and see the ocean and go diving.

KV: What’s your favourite pure or eco-friendly exercise within the Keys?

SS: Diving. And every week, I’m going out on the boat.

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