Resting at approximately 8 m below the water's surface, the Christ of the Abyss statue is one of the most iconic dive sites in the world. With arms outstretching towards the rising sun, the 1800 kg submerged bronze sculpture was placed on the ocean floor in August of 1965. Created by Italian sculptor, Guido Galletti, it was originally made for Egidi Cressi, the famous scuba diving equipment manufacturer, and was later donated by the Cressi family to the Underwater Society of America. The statue's final resting place lies along the Florida Reef Tract, offshore of Key Largo, within John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The Florida Reef Tract (FRT) is a pronounced shelf-edge barrier coral reef system extending offshore of Miami-Dade County southwards to the Florida Keys. Exposures to the Miami Limestone in this region, which formed during the Sangamonian high sea-level stand (OIS 5e substage), affected the morphology of the underlying bedrock along the southeast Florida continental shelf. This phenomenon contributed to the formation of submerged lithified paleoshorelines, interreefal sand channels, paleomarine abrasion surfaces, and ultimately aided in the formation of the FRT, which is currently known as the third-largest barrier reef chain in the world at approximately 270 km long. This complex barrier reef system includes geomorphological features such as patch reefs, inter-reefal sand flats, and hardground rock reef areas, and serves as essential colonization substrate for a multitude of hard and soft coral species. (Photograph taken July 2017 by Chris Makowski, Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF), Coconut Creek, Florida, U.S.A.)