My better half and I are looking to take a trip somewhere with warm water, CONUS, and plenty of wildlife to go diving come spring/summer. (Its difficult for us to go OCONUS due to work quarantine requirements.) We are on a budget given the past year's events plus us getting our certs (advanced/NITROX, working on rescue) and all our equipment. What are all your recommendations? Just sort of investigating and trying to plan for once my leg heals and I get medical sign-off. (Broke leg/ankle, dislocated foot but surgeon says with PT I should be 100% and able to ride and dive again. Trying to get something to look forward to.)

Florida Keys. Looe Key. Tons of wrecks. John Pennekamp.

Lot of good stuff in the keys. That's where I've done the majority of my diving. The Vandenberg in Key West is especially good.

Panama City is pretty decent in warm months and there are fewer cattle car operators.

PC Dive Center is the premiere boat operator, with 2 45 footish convrrted crew boats, and the 65' Island Diver, which sometimes makes a 12 hour trip to the Empire Mica, a tanker that was torpedoed off the gulf coast by the krauts.

ETA. Hit Vortex Springs as a post Gulf dive before heading home.  That'll get the sale water off your gear.

Been poking around and those all look like awesome spots to check out.

How do you go about finding a guide or someone experienced with the local area? Since neither of us have any ocean dives yet, probably should have someone diving along.

Rainbow Reef out of Key Largo always includes a free guide off their boats, per friends who have used them a lot. Cattle boats, but it’s a lot of shallower stuff, which friends who were newer divers loved.

Looe Key Resort

We were in the Keys early Dec and dived with several outfits.  We’ll stick with LKR next time.  Great people. Nice bar and restaurant.  Hotel is older but clean with cold A/C.

Any where Jupiter down South will be warm in the summer.  Jupiter and West Palm will be deeper (80'-90'+).  Shallower dives <70'ish are common in Broward.
Variety of critters, reef, and wrecks to be had all along the way.
Yes, Rainbow does offer a free guide.  Great operation, but it is run like a bus service.   They are fairly punctual, so if someone is dragging their ass at the beginning, your dives will be rushed.  I used them fairly often a couple of years ago to the point that I got to have my own 'guide' (I showed up solo).  Nice shallow dives, reef with swim throughs, and the Benwood wreck is my fav (40ish).
Sea Dwellers is my preferred shop in KL.  One boat, no rush.  I got full hour dives with them.  Great briefings.  I was able to navigate to all the swim throughs on French (by Xmas Tree) on my own.

Any charter can provide a guide. Usually runs 100-150.  But it will be just the 2 of you.  If they group you with more ask for a discount.

If you want to dive North Broward, let me know and will set you up with a great shop and guide.

Thanks for the input, and appreciate any more any has!

Unfortunately, had a heart to heart with my PT yesterday, and he was saying in the similar injuries hes seen, I'm probably looking at a minimum of 6 months before I get as much function back as I'm gonna get. I was hoping a little bit quicker than that, but this might be a pretty slow year for us.

To tack onto what others have said already Key Largo/Islamorada is the spot for diving conus, far and away.  If you haven't dove in the ocean but are comfortable on SCUBA before I'd recommend the Benford as a first dive (a broken up wreck in 40' of water) which seems to aways have great sea life, like turtles, nurse sharks, eels, and colorful fish.   French Reef is my preferred reef there, unfortunately the reefs have been really suffering the last 15 years, and there isn't near as much healthy coral and marine life as 15 years ago, but still plenty to see if you haven't dove a reef before.

Once you've done a few days on shallower stuff and are comfortable in the ocean and with diving off a boat my favorite reef is a little deeper, Conch reef is 50 - 95 ft deep and I think it's still healthier than the shallower reefs.  Absolutely do not miss the wrecks (really artificial reefs), the Duane, the Bibb, the Speigel Grove, and the Eagle. (Pick one or two) I always see larger marine life like Goliath Grouper, large barracuda, and sharks on these. These wrecks are deeper, they sit in 130ish feet of water, but their strictures vary in depth. I highly recommend nitrox on these dives to increase bottom times, and find a larger tank (either an over pumped steel lp 105, or a steel 120), you will hoover down an aluminum 80 at 100 feet long before you're ready to come up. Also wear gloves on wrecks so you can pull and glide and hold on during heavy current (which are common on these.

One final recommendation, you absolutely must do a night dive (or many) while you're down there, the ocean absolutely comes to life at night. Also the colors of the coral really pop in vibrant reds and oranges at night. Just be sure to have a good primary and alternate dive light.  Given the choice I would almost exclusively night dive.  One idea is to do a night dive of a site you've already done once or twice in daylight at night as navigation gets a little tricky. My favorite night dive is the Duane, followed by the Benford.

keys are about it for clear, warm, you want to see colorful stuff, and still in CONUS...

and ft. Jefferson was one of the more interesting dives... lots of fish and coral. There were some really large Brain coral heads...

This comes to mind.

+1 on this shop.

I dove the keys a lot from 200 - 2003. I went back two weeks ago and none of the operators I used 20 years ago remained. Rainbow Reef is a huge operation and run big boats but they do dive the Duane and Bibb so they don't live on the shallow reef. They were fine and had good customer service for me.

I hope you have better weather than me whenever you go. We had 6 straight days of 19+ winds so NO dive boats went out.

Blue Heron bridge in west palm if it’s blowing offshore.

If your interested in diving Key largo message me I can set you up with a good package deal.