An island that faces the reef
Key Largo is the first island you reach in the Florida Keys, an easy hour's drive from Miami. The Monroe County tourism council calls it the Diving Capital of the World, and the reason sits just off the Atlantic shore: John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, which Florida State Parks describes as the country's first undersea park, covering about 70 nautical square miles of reef, seagrass and mangrove.
The park exists because of a warning. In 1957 Dr. Gilbert Voss of the University of Miami told a conservation conference that Keys corals were being hammered, chiseled and even dynamited to make tourist souvenirs. He found an ally in John D. Pennekamp, an editor at the Miami Herald. In the spring of 1960 President Eisenhower proclaimed the Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve, and at the dedication on December 10 that year Governor LeRoy Collins surprised everyone by naming the park after Pennekamp.
A protected reef is also a busy fishing ground around it. Local guides split their days between Florida Bay, where bonefish, tarpon and snook cruise the backcountry, and blue water offshore for mahi, sailfish and wahoo. Dockside grills on the island serve the day's mahi and lobster, and dinner menus lean on fresh snapper.
The everyday reef fish here is yellowtail snapper: small, sweet, thin fillets that cook in minutes. The tourism council's fishing calendar marks April through August as its peak, which lines up neatly with long summer evenings on the bay side.
The lobster rule only Key Largo has
Florida opens spiny lobster with a two day sport season on the last consecutive Wednesday and Thursday of July. The 2027 dates are July 28 and 29. In Monroe County the bag is six per person, and diving at night is banned for those two days. One rule belongs to Key Largo alone: harvest is prohibited inside John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park during the sport season.
The regular season runs August 6 through March 31. A lobster must have a carapace longer than 3 inches, measured in the water, and must come ashore whole. You need a saltwater license and a lobster permit unless you are exempt, and the no take zones of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary stay closed all year.
