Sites › Florida Keys

USNS Vandenberg wreck

Florida Keyswreck US Navy transport ship sunk as artificial reef at Key West

Coordinates 24.45, -81.7333 (from Wikidata Q2468048, CC0). Wikidata coordinates may mark a reef, park or wreck in general, not a mooring buoy or entry point. · Wikipedia

🎬 Video coming soon. Footage from the ReefSeason crew.

What you might see, by month

Counts of species records within about 1 km of this point, from GBIF.org, filtered to CC0 and CC BY 4.0 licenses only (land animals and birds excluded). These come from survey effort, so more records do not mean more animals. They are not a sighting forecast. 28 qualifying records in total. See the records on GBIF.

Jan 12 records
  • Thylacodes vandyensis (10)
  • Cobia (Rachycentron canadum) (1)
Feb 0 records
  • No qualifying records
Mar 1 records
Apr 0 records
  • No qualifying records
May 4 records
  • Thylacodes vandyensis (3)
  • goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) (1)
Jun 0 records
  • No qualifying records
Jul 3 records
Aug 1 records
Sep 1 records
Oct 0 records
  • No qualifying records
Nov 0 records
  • No qualifying records
Dec 0 records
  • No qualifying records

Most-recorded species here (all months)

  1. Thylacodes vandyensis (16)
  2. Pterois volitans (6)
  3. goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) (1)
  4. Cobia (Rachycentron canadum) (1)

Reef heat stress: Florida Keys region

NOAA Coral Reef Watch 5 km regional virtual station Florida Keys. This covers the whole region, not this exact site. Latest value at build time (2026-10-12):

Bleaching alert level (7-day max)Bleaching Watch
Degree Heating Weeks16.7671 °C-weeks
SST range29.73–30.58 °C

Values refresh from NOAA when the page loads. Source: NOAA CRW virtual station: Florida Keys (data, method). Credit: NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

Conditions links

Depths, entry details and mooring info aren't listed yet because we haven't verified them from a citable source.

Data citation

GBIF.org (2026-10-14) GBIF Occurrence Data, queried via the GBIF API: https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search?decimalLatitude=24.439999999999998,24.46&decimalLongitude=-81.7433,-81.7233&license=CC0_1_0&license=CC_BY_4_0&taxonKey=44&taxonKey=206&taxonKey=229&taxonKey=136&taxonKey=225&occurrenceStatus=PRESENT&limit=0. Records by license: CC0_1_0: 21, CC_BY_4_0: 7. Contributing datasets (top 15):