Best places to live in the US for diving

[Dee Ramsey]

Hello to everyone. I am new to scubaBoard. I am looking to move where there is awnsome diving almost out my front door. I have been looking at Southern Florida and was wondering if any folks live in that area. How do you like living in the area your at and how is the diving community out there?
Tanks alot for your responce.

 

[DennisS]

S FL has some great diving

The keys have the reefs

Broward has beach diving

Palm Beach has drift dives an pelagics

Lots of good diving, you just need to find a good paying job, and it's a dive paradise

 

[TSandM]

I think Seattle just might be the best place in the US to be a diver. We can shore dive almost 365 days a year, and the days when you can't, you wouldn't want to. We have no surf to cope with, and although we have currents, they're mostly predictable. We have shore diving sites where you can see a huge proportion of the wildlife that exists in the PNW -- but we have charters to take us to the places where the currents keep everything scrubbed and reveal the incredible color we can have here. We have Giant Pacific Octopuses and wolf eels, and a carpet of echinoderms and crustaceans you won't see many places.

The downside is that it's very cold water diving (and cold weather diving in the wintertime, she says, remembering the numb feet in the parking lot yesterday!) But it's also beautiful country with a lot of other outdoorsy things available, too.

 

[Peter Guy]

To the OP -- an unanswerable question without a lot of caveats.

For example, the "best place to be a scuba diver" may well depend on:

a. Employment to pay for one's recreational habit. I'm sure it will come as a shock to some people, but not all divers are independently wealthy and thus need to be employed in order to "have a life." Thus it MAY be a requirement for "the best place" that there be numerous, and lucrative, jobs available. I have not been to the Florida Keys, for example, but I'd be willing to bet there are more lucrative jobs available in the L.A. or Seattle areas than in the Keys. (And yes, I am aware of unemployment rates, but if, for example, you are a skilled software techie, there are jobs available in those two areas -- a skilled busboy, maybe not so much.)

b. How close do you want to be to your diving? If you want to be able to sit at home and say "I'd like to be in the water in 60 minutes" or "I think I'll swing by for a dive after work" then you'll probably need to be close to shore diving spots which may well leave out a lot of Florida (for example).

c. Do you care what the water temps are?

Lots and lots of questions and until they are asked and answered, how can anyone define "The best place to be a diver?"

----
To me, perhaps, the "Best place to be a diver" is the Yucatan Peninsula -- but not everyone wants to be able to dive in shallow, warm caves to rinse off the salt from a pleasant reef dive -- but even that area has severe negatives.

 

[Thalassamania]

I think the best diving is to be had in the Monterey Bay area, say Carmel. I suspect that a lot of folks would rather dive in warm water though, Hawaii, the Keys, U.S.V.I., Puerto Rico.

 

[blkirk91]

Money and distance will be the big factor for alot of people. Warm in Florida and I have no clue as to the cost of living. For me if I was restrained to the CONUS I would go for San Diego. Cost of living is a bit higher but you have some spectacular diving. If you can break away from CONUS the head for PR or Hawaii.

 

[mdb]

I'll add to the San Diego vote. I lived in South Mission Beach and La Jolla and there was great beach diving just offshore.

Quick trips to Mexico are also in the offering.

With the new reefs offshore it is now even better.

I now live in the San Francisco bay area and Monterey and the North Coast offer great diving, Just not as close as walking
across the street and out to a nice kelp laden reef.

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

To the OP -- an unanswerable question without a lot of caveats.
b. How close do you want to be to your diving? If you want to be able to sit at home and say "I'd like to be in the water in 60 minutes" or "I think I'll swing by for a dive after work" then you'll probably need to be close to shore diving spots which may well leave out a lot of Florida (for example).

Not necessarily. I live in S. Florida and am 8 miles from the beach and one of my favorite beach dive spots. Broward County is the best for beach diving. Course, it's crowded down here, the area was hit pretty hard by the housing crisis and jobs are hard to find. But, hey, as one of the unemployed, fresh lobster is good on the grill!

 

[j2s]

Like the others have said, It depends on what kind of diving you may prefer, where you want to live....I'm a S. Florida, native but have lived/dove all over the world....Some of those places have no comparison for their specific type of diving....But Florida probably has the most varied, year-round, warm weather diving than any other geographic area I can think of....two coasts [wrecks on both]..Cave/cavern/sink diving [some of the best in the world] deep diving and of course the Florida Keys, one of the only living reefs......If you lived in the center of the state you would be at most an easy day's drive or less from any point......Because Florida is an international destination there are several major a/p's that make it easy to fly to other global dive spots........If we could just learn to count votes we'd have it made rofl !!!!

 

[jasonb751]

I'm going to have to throw Pensacola out there. We have gulf diving, spring diving, bay diving just about everything. Plenty of wrecks to explore, nearly unlimited opportunities to spearfish fish, oyster diving in east bay, numerous great shore dives in the gulf, vortex and Morrison springs an hour and a half away, jackson blue springs about 3 hours away. I could go on forever. Oh, and you cannot forget about the Mighty O!

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