The first time I visited Anthony’s Key was to purchase their 48 foot Pro Dive boat they had for sale and I had flown over from Belize via Pedro San Sula to Roatan to check the boat out.
I’m willing to bet there are very few places in the world that have built as perfect a dive operation as Anthony’s Key. With 11, yes 11 dedicated dive boats lined up waiting to take you diving to locations as close a merely five minutes away, Anthony’s Key is a divers paradise. Night dives, shore dives, open water dives, wall dives, dolphin dives… you name it, they’ve thought of it. They are even home to The Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences.
My favourite part of the stay, on my second time back to check on progress on the boat, was the Dolphin Dive, where I actually got to stay in an enclosed but very large pen with a number of dolphins and basically play pitch and catch with some sea kelp. Accompanied by a dolphin behaviourist and videographer, a maximum of ten snorkelers interact with the dolphins off a white-sand key in approximately 20 feet of water.
During our visit, there were only three of us, myself, Arthur Westby and a young Divemaster that was working with us at the time.
Following a 25-minute beach encounter, the snorkel session begins, and lasts approximately 30 minutes, allowing participants maximum opportunities for physical contact. If the dolphins choose not to interact, there is a private area for them within the two-acre enclosure.
On my third trip back to pick up the boat and bring it back to Belize, I tried it all. Their night diving, some shore diving, which was simply spectacular less than 100 feet from the Island’s shoreline, wall diving. I loved it… and I loved the key the rooms were on, complete to a T with the Key deer roaming around the property.
Simply from the shore, divers can swim with eel, grouper and octopus as you descend to depths of 40 feet or more, as well as schools of blue tangs, parrotfish, angelfish and damselfish, sea fans, star coral and brain coral. In addition, a small plane wreck in the lagoon at 30 feet is an excellent training tool for students and novice divers.
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