“To a diver, there’s nothing more important than a crystal-clear sea bottom,” said Spencer Slate. “Every diver is an ecologist. We love the ocean.”
Spencer, who owns Captain Slate’s SCUBA Adventures in the Upper Florida Keys community of Tavernier, frequently takes dive groups out on his vessels for the Keys’ Coral Restoration Foundation’s excursions to its coral nurseries. He also conducts lectures about Florida’s Coral Reef at the University of Miami.
Spencer’s daughter Sky has followed in his footsteps to become involved in the dive business.
Spencer taught the first education course at Key Largo’s Reef Environmental Education Foundation, where he is a former board member. He’s also been a member of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s advisory committee and helped to promote catch-and-release fishing in the early 1990s.
His dive shop is a SCUBA instructor training facility, certifying for the National Association of Underwater Instructors, Scuba Diving International and Scuba Educators International. One of the first dedicated to diving in the Keys, the shop also offers a variety of classes, certified by the Florida Department of Education, for novice divers.
Spencer moved to the Keys from Jacksonville, Florida, where he was a high school teacher for six years. Today, he’s known both for his adventurous underwater feedings of marine creatures and as an environmental activist.
Inducted into the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association Hall of Fame in 2019 and the International SCUBA Diving Hall of Fame in 2004, he’s also a certified Notary Public who conducts underwater weddings.
Keys Voices: When did you first come to the Florida Keys and why?
Spencer Slate watches a boulder coral release gametes off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary during a once-a-year mass-spawning ritual. (Photo by Frazier Nivens, Florida Keys News Bureau)
Spencer Slate: I fell in love with the Keys when I came in 1972 to dive. In 1978, I opened Captain Slate’s Atlantis Dive Center, now Captain Slate’s SCUBA Adventures.
KV: What aspects of the Keys environment or way of life matter most to you?
SS: The environment is my entire living. Without a beautiful ocean and all its beautiful corals, fishes and clean water, there would be no diving anywhere in the Keys. Our water is our greatest asset and we must protect it in every way.
KV: Who or what inspired you to become passionate about respecting and protecting the Keys’ natural world?
SS: I grew up watching “Sea Hunt” in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and was inspired to be a diver. I started diving in July 1963. I moved to Florida and then later, in ’78, came to Key Largo to open up my dive shop.
KV: How does that passion influence your work or profession?
Spencer Slate, garbed as Santa Claus, provides underwater holiday photo opportunities each year as a fundraiser for a local children’s charity. (Photo by Frazier Nivens, Florida Keys News Bureau)
SS: My work is taking people out to see the beautiful reef and all the beautiful critters on it. I do that almost daily.
KV: What are some of the ways, personally or through your work, that you connect with and/or help protect the local environment and unique lifestyle?
SS: I connect through my knowledge of decades of diving, especially here in the Keys, and through my involvement in the dive industry to bring people here to dive. I also do seminars and lectures, and teach across the country to connect people with the environment and our unique lifestyle that we have in the Keys.
KV: What keeps you energized, challenged and focused on your path?
SS: Seeing the ocean and going out on the ocean, and continuously diving and interacting with the creatures and the reef. Every time my face goes underwater, for the first instant I’m in another world. As humans we can’t breathe water, so we come back up and get another tank.
KV: What do you hope your positive environmental actions will accomplish?
Spencer enjoys spending time with his daughter Sky and granddaughter Addy.
SS: I’ve been asked to do environmental lectures at schools and colleges across the country and at dive shows, and I’ve written many papers and articles for newspapers and dive magazines. I’ve helped restore our reef from damage from a sea urchin die-off, from coral bleaching and from pollution.
KV: What message do you want your actions and example to communicate to people you encounter?
SS: Preserve and protect our oceans. We can be advisors and watch-keepers of the ocean. We must continue to take people out, show them, challenge them to come out, to come to our lectures, and to actually go out and see the ocean and go diving.
KV: What’s your favorite natural or eco-friendly activity in the Keys?
SS: Diving. And each week, I’m going out on the boat.
