My son reaches down to touch the nose of the Nurse shark as it saunters up from the bottom of the bay to snatch a fish from Ron, Sea Base’s care taker. The little Mollys swarm a hand or foot left still in the water, and nibble at the surface skin as they swarm. Four-foot Angel fish jump for the food Ron tosses into the water, their powerful bodies quick and strong.
The ocean? Sea World? No, it’s Utah’s desert, nine hundred miles from the nearest ocean. In Grantsville, out past Toole, 40 miles west of Salt Lake City, Bonneville Seabase is a group of salty geothermal springs that have been turned into bays – diving bays. Three pools that drop as deep as 63 feet are stocked by Linda Nelson and her husband George Sanders, with a dozen varieties of tropical fish that technically shouldn’t be able to survive in this water.
This is Utah’s inland diving ocean. With three connecting bays, platforms for divers, a sunken ship called the “Sheer Joy” as well as a water tunnel connecting White Rocks Bay to Habitiat Bay, this unique inland ocean was designed as a dive training site where scuba divers can come and do their deep water dives to complete their certification. My sons and I are here on assignment from Wasatch Woman magazine. For more info tune into the magazine. Keeping it real: visibility was very low. Had we not been there for feeding time I'm not sure i would have believed the fish were really there. I've heard some people feel ripped off after going out and seeing nothing, but others feel like it's the most surreal experience to be seeing tropic fish, including the shark, in the middle of the desert. Some huge fish cruise these waters. The place rents out all your digs and gear.
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