Currents: Florida Panhandle Shipwreck Trail

Twelve shipwrecks are tag teaming to boost tourism in the Florida Panhandle, which suffered after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill more than two years ago.

The Florida Panhandle Shipwreck Trail is a series of a dozen wrecks selected by the Florida Department of State’s Underwater Archaeology Team, with input from local dive operators, based on popular demand, ecological diversity and historical significance. It’s a way to combine “heritage tourism with recreational tourism with ecological tourism,” says Dr. Roger Smith, Florida’s state underwater archaeologist.

Along the trail, which runs roughly from Pensacola to Port St. Joe, there’s the USS Oriskany — the world’s largest artificial reef — the San Pablo, a fruit transport that was destroyed in a top secret U.S. military operation, and 10 other wrecks sitting in depths ranging from 25 to 212 feet. 

The interactive website floridapanhandledivetrail.com makes it easy to find an operator who will take you to the dive sites. The website also features underwater videos, a current weather forecast and historical information about each wreck. You can find the trail on Facebook too. “We put this trail up on Facebook” — www.facebook.com/FloridaPanhandleShipwreckTrail — “so that people could share their experiences and also upload their own videos and photos as they go along the trail,” Smith says.

Passports for the trail are available at participating dive shops.  The passport is a way to track the dives you’ve done; it has information about each wreck, a place to log each dive and a space to validate each stop with an official sticker.