Any good beach diving in Florida??

[skubadad]

I've dove with Dive Locker several times over the last two years. In fact, I dove with them this past weekend. You will not find a better shop to dive with. We dove off of Pat's boat (Downtime). His wife, Bonnie, always brings along fresh pineapple, watermelon and canteloupe for the surface intervals. What I really like about them is they have a 6 person maximum on the number of divers...so you won't be stuck on an over-crowded boat. This past weekend we dove the Stage I and the Acokeet. These are two offshore dives (10+ miles). The viz was incredible...50-60'. There was a 6' bull shark on the Stage I, lots of lobster, and some barracuda. Acokeet had a jewfish in the 400-500lb range I'd guess.

I will caution you about waiting until later in the summer. The past two years the Hurricane season has been brutal and that makes it hard to plan a dive trip. Because of work I have to plan my trips 3-4 weeks in advance...and over the past couple of years we've had to cancel a few times because of storms.

 

[scuba kitten]

Thanks for the great info on Panama City diving!! Unfortunately, I don't have much say on the timing. It's a family trip and I'm the only diver.

sk

 

[Scubaguy62]

Asides from LBTS, there's a little spot in Pompano Beach, at 12th Street. The surface swimm is 1/2 that of LBTS, and the reef has its own mini 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tiers. If you have enough gas, you can fin your way east to the pompano drop-off, but that's about 3 - 400 yds from shore. Otherwise, I'm talking EXCELLENT diving within 50 - 75 yds from shore.

 

[mike_s]

I used PCDC this past weekend. Yep... they have taken over HydroSpace's dive boats. They've got new crews I think and are still working the bugs out... but they should be ok. Nice folks though. I think Dive Locker might be an alternative.

Hydrospace "is no longer" but their boats run by PCDC are in the old slips at Hydrospaces dock next to Capt Andersons.

To get back to the orignal posters question. Both PCB and Destin have decent shore diving, but just pretty much at the Jetty locations. Several of us dove the Destin Jetties Saturday. THere is a report thread on it in the FL Conchs forum with pics.. Look under trips/report sub-forum as I think it might been one of the ones moved.

Is there tons of shore diving here in the panhandle? nope.;.. but a few spots. Unless you count the springs, then you have about enough to have a new dive site every day shore diving.