I'm Teresa Newton, and Coral Ledge is my shop. I spent eleven years in a hospital lab in Ohio looking at things through a microscope. In 1988 I traded it for the Keys, and now I look at things through a mask. The colors are better. I opened Coral Ledge in 1991 with one boat, twenty tanks and a lot of nerve, and we've been taking people out to the reefs off Key Largo ever since.

We're a small shop on purpose. Our boat, the Second Shift (named for the hours I used to keep), is a 34-foot dive boat with a big swim platform, shade, and a freshwater shower, and we stop booking at fourteen divers so there's room to gear up without elbowing anybody. I teach the certification classes myself.

Which reefs we visit depends on the wind and the current, and the captain decides that morning. See Reefs We Visit for depths, what you'll see and what experience you need.

Everybody asks about the statue. Christ of the Abyss is a bronze statue about nine feet tall, arms raised toward the surface, standing in about 25 feet of water at Key Largo Dry Rocks. It has been there since 1965. On a calm, clear day snorkelers can see it from the surface, and divers can swim right down to it. We go two or three times a week, weather permitting; ask when you book.

Learn to dive in warm, clear water instead of a cold quarry, and spend your last day on a real reef.

What's included: the textbook, dive tables and logbook; all classroom and pool time; four ocean dives from the boat; all your scuba gear (buoyancy jacket, regulator and gauges, tanks, weights, and a wetsuit if you want one); and your certification card, which is good for life at dive shops all over the world.

What you buy: your own mask, snorkel, fins and boots, because they have to fit you and nobody else. We'll fit you properly. A good set runs about $120 to $180.

Before you come: you'll need to swim 200 yards, any stroke, no clock, and float or tread water for ten minutes. Every student fills out a medical questionnaire. Some conditions, among them asthma, heart trouble, ear problems and some medications, need your doctor's OK in writing before you can go in the water. E-mail us for the form and take care of it at home before your trip, so you don't lose a vacation day to it.

Ages: 12 and up. Under 18 with a parent's signature.

Started at home? If you've done the classroom and pool work with a shop where you live, bring your paperwork and finish your four ocean dives with us in two days for $175.

One more thing: plan on not flying for 24 hours after your last dive. Save the last day of your trip for the beach.

Prices are per day. Rent for three days and the fourth is free. All our regulators are serviced every year and checked before every trip, and the shop has its own compressor, so your air is filled here.

• Two-tank reef trips $45 Monday through Thursday (save $10)
• Open water certification two for $550: bring your husband, your wife, your sister, your fishing buddy
• Snorkel trips: kids under 12 ride and snorkel free with a paying adult on weekdays

The reefs off Key Largo are part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which has protected the waters around the Keys since 1990. The reef is the reason every one of us is here, and it is alive. Please treat it that way.

Never touch, stand on, kneel on, kick or hold onto coral. Every coral head is a colony of tiny living animals, and a touch rubs off the thin protective film that keeps them healthy. A careless fin can break off years of growth in a second. Some of the big coral heads you'll swim over are hundreds of years old.

Watch your gear. Most coral damage is an accident: a dangling gauge, an extra regulator dragging along the bottom, a fin kick you didn't feel. Clip everything in, and stay well up off the reef.

If your buoyancy isn't steady yet, stay over the sand until it is. That isn't a scolding. It's how every one of us learned.

Take nothing. No shells, no coral, no sea fans, nothing living and nothing dead. On many of these reefs even fishing isn't allowed.

Don't feed the fish. It changes how they behave, and the barracuda learn things you'd rather they didn't.

Snorkelers: don't stand up on the reef to rest. Lie back in your vest and float, or swim over to the sand.

We tie up to mooring buoys. On the reefs we visit, boats tie up to a buoy fixed to the bottom instead of dropping an anchor, because an anchor dragged across a reef can do more harm in a minute than a boatload of divers does all year. If the buoy is taken, we wait or we go somewhere else. We never anchor on coral.

A diver who won't follow these rules sits out the second dive. I don't enjoy saying so, and I've only had to do it a handful of times in eight years.

If we cancel a trip for weather, you get your money back, every cent, or a rain check for any day you like. You won't have to ask twice.

We cancel when the National Weather Service puts out a small craft advisory, when there's lightning around, or when the captain doesn't like the look of the sky. We would rather lose a trip than frighten you or hurt you.

If you need to cancel, give us 24 hours' notice and you owe nothing.

Hurricanes. Hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30. If a hurricane watch goes up for the Keys while you're booked with us, we'll call you, refund your deposit, and tell you honestly what we know.

We know a little about it. Last September Hurricane Georges crossed the Keys and took most of our dock with it. We rebuilt it two feet higher, on bigger pilings, and the Second Shift was back out on the reef before Thanksgiving. The new dock has a bench at the end. Come sit on it after your dive.

The shop is open every day, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Christmas Day.

We're on a canal on the ocean side of Key Largo, just off the Overseas Highway. Look for the red-and-white diver-down flag over the door and the blue boat at the dock.

To book: call (555) 555-0156 or e-mail [email protected]. Walk-ins are welcome if there's room on the boat, but in the winter there usually isn't.

Friends on GeoCities.us: Retired to the Keys, from two Ohioans who moved down in 1996 (we Ohioans keep turning up here), and Scuba Diary: Getting Certified at 45, for anyone sitting on the fence about learning to dive.  |  More in TheTropics