Pelham Blue Water Scuba Rock Quarry is located in Pelham, Alabama. This is an open water dive site catering mostly to recreational open water divers and classes. But there's also some slightly deeper water for advanced divers. Topside is beautiful with rock bluffs, a dive shop, bathrooms, and floating platforms for water entry. Water clarity is usually around 40 ft and depths range anywhere from 30 ft to a max depth in the middle of the quarry of 150 ft. Water temperatures vary with season. Even in summer months, the surface temperature may be 80F, but you will hit a thermocline about 30 feet deep that plunges to about 52F. In the winter, it's all very cold.
They have quite a few things to look at underwater. They have concrete culverts you can swim through, a sailboat, a bus on its side, old cars, old fire trucks, and even a camper. They have training platforms that are also great for decompression if you decide to go to the deep area. To keep people from being enticed to go deep, there was nothing intentionally sunk in the deep section. Everything to actually look at is between depths of 30 to 80 ft. If you are just dying to go deep (which I was) you can go out into the middle of the quarry. But the only thing you are going to see is bare silty bottom.
You are allowed to dive solo and use scooters at this site. Entrance fee is $25. Be sure to get there early, especially in the summer, because the parking lot fills up fast.
Unfortunately, there are two other rock quarries in Alabama that once allowed open water recreational diving that were also GREAT! One was in Glencoe and the other in huntsville. To my knowledge, the one in Huntsville (formerly called Madison Aquatic Park) is closed but could reopen by the county at some point. The one in Glencoe was called Diveland. It is still open, but restricted to instructors and classes on a reservation basis.
For more info:
http://www.divealabama.com/
