David B sent me a link to a recent NY Times story about an artifical reef. I promoted a similar idea back when I was first diving with codger divers. But of course I never did anything about it. Now some people in Utah has actually built a year round tropical reef for divers called Bonneville Seabase.
Reef diving in warm water is worth paying for and these entrepreneurs are pioneering a brilliant concept. The back of the envelope calculations I did indicated it could make a lot of money. Diving regularly in warm water without having to fly has value.
I’m going to plan a trip up there to see it and dive. Codger road trip? Ski and dive weekend?
Discover more from Simon Burrow
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Simon, I’ve never been there, and only know it through second hand accounts. My understanding is that the facility is fed by natural warm springs and maintains a salinity similar to ocean water due to the naturally occurring salt/minerals in the area (it’s not far from the Great Salt Lake). Those same conditions, however, contribute to low visibility, I’ve heard. We’d be happy to check it out (we’re only about an hour from there), or we can wait for you and any other interested Codgers and do it as an official Codger research dive. Schedule it during the Sundance Film Festival and you can satisfy several of your desires at once: independent film; scuba diving; skiing.
And as long as we’re at it, there’s another unique diving experience near here: http://www.homesteadresort.com/the_crater/the_crater.cfm
It’s not a reef environment; more like diving in a large hot tub entombed in a cave.