schuylerclark
Contributor
Made the drive to BHB for a Labor Day weekend of diving with my life and diving buddy (aka my lovely wife). As a visiting diver, I thought I'd share my thoughts from a non-local perspective. As always, YMMV.
We stayed in the Open Waters Resort just on the east side of the bridge, which has direct access to the east bridge span without needing to go to the park. This is the primary reason to stay at this location - the service and rooms are nothing special, but you can enter the water directly from the property and they have a rinse station and drying racks set up for guest use. They were in the middle of rebuilding their dock while we were there, but had provided for an easy alternate access to the water. We met half a dozen other guests, and I'm pretty sure everyone staying there was there to dive. The convenience of suiting up in your hotel room and walking into the dive site cannot be overstated. We rented tanks and weights from Pura Vida, and stopped in Force-E's weekend tent sale - staff at both shops were very kind and friendly.
We dove high tide for three successive days (all in the afternoons), and spent our dives entirely under and around the east bridge. Currents can be significant outside of slack tides, and visibility noticeably worsened as the tides shifted outward. It seemed to me that the actual shift in current from inward to outward came roughly 10-20 minutes after official high tide, but I have no idea if that's typical or not. We found that starting our dive around 30 minutes before the listed high tide worked best for viz and currents, and that the group of divers from the park would tend to arrive under the bridge around 20 min before high tide and head back around 20 min after. I never experienced a current I couldn't swim against with fins, but it was taxing at max current. I concur with the general recommendation to dive within an hour either side of slack high tide. All three days, the water temps were generally in the mid 80s and viz ranged from 30-50'.
We are the sort to take our time and try to focus on the small critters, so our dives at BHB were very enjoyable, especially with the long dive times. Max depth was 21', and we consistently got 80-90 min dive times with AL80s. Instead of posting my mediocre photos, I'll refer anyone interested to the pics in the Blue Heron Bridge Trolls III thread, which are plentiful (much respect to Pipehorse!). We saw conch, crab, high hats, a large eagle ray, some small greyish rays, grunts, small snappers, starfish, flurries of sardines, many angelfish, four eyes, barracuda, parrotfish, moon jellyfish, sargent majors, lobster, a few wrecks, flounder, a frogfish(?), etc, etc, etc. The variety of sea life was plentiful and met every expectation. For those who enjoy the small critters, I highly recommend. Despite my best efforts, I could not spot an octopus or seahorse, though others diving that weekend did. We opted not to dive at night since the night high tides were in the small hours from 2-4 AM, though I understand the access from the hotel makes that possible as long as you don't set foot on land in the park.
We did need to be aware of folks fishing from the bridge, and a cutting tool was needed a couple times for line fragments around the bridge - it is the Intercoastal waterway in FL after all, and you can certainly find some trash to pick up if you look for it. That said, none of this detracted from our enjoyment of the dives. For newer divers like us, this is also an interesting dive that allowed us to practice our skills and have fun with less exposure to risk. (I'm confident we could handle a CESA from 21'.)
Overall, I would highly recommend for three reasons:
1. the abundance of smaller sea life
2. the ease of access - especially if staying at Open Waters
3. simpler shore diving (even for less experienced divers like us)
We stayed in the Open Waters Resort just on the east side of the bridge, which has direct access to the east bridge span without needing to go to the park. This is the primary reason to stay at this location - the service and rooms are nothing special, but you can enter the water directly from the property and they have a rinse station and drying racks set up for guest use. They were in the middle of rebuilding their dock while we were there, but had provided for an easy alternate access to the water. We met half a dozen other guests, and I'm pretty sure everyone staying there was there to dive. The convenience of suiting up in your hotel room and walking into the dive site cannot be overstated. We rented tanks and weights from Pura Vida, and stopped in Force-E's weekend tent sale - staff at both shops were very kind and friendly.
We dove high tide for three successive days (all in the afternoons), and spent our dives entirely under and around the east bridge. Currents can be significant outside of slack tides, and visibility noticeably worsened as the tides shifted outward. It seemed to me that the actual shift in current from inward to outward came roughly 10-20 minutes after official high tide, but I have no idea if that's typical or not. We found that starting our dive around 30 minutes before the listed high tide worked best for viz and currents, and that the group of divers from the park would tend to arrive under the bridge around 20 min before high tide and head back around 20 min after. I never experienced a current I couldn't swim against with fins, but it was taxing at max current. I concur with the general recommendation to dive within an hour either side of slack high tide. All three days, the water temps were generally in the mid 80s and viz ranged from 30-50'.
We are the sort to take our time and try to focus on the small critters, so our dives at BHB were very enjoyable, especially with the long dive times. Max depth was 21', and we consistently got 80-90 min dive times with AL80s. Instead of posting my mediocre photos, I'll refer anyone interested to the pics in the Blue Heron Bridge Trolls III thread, which are plentiful (much respect to Pipehorse!). We saw conch, crab, high hats, a large eagle ray, some small greyish rays, grunts, small snappers, starfish, flurries of sardines, many angelfish, four eyes, barracuda, parrotfish, moon jellyfish, sargent majors, lobster, a few wrecks, flounder, a frogfish(?), etc, etc, etc. The variety of sea life was plentiful and met every expectation. For those who enjoy the small critters, I highly recommend. Despite my best efforts, I could not spot an octopus or seahorse, though others diving that weekend did. We opted not to dive at night since the night high tides were in the small hours from 2-4 AM, though I understand the access from the hotel makes that possible as long as you don't set foot on land in the park.
We did need to be aware of folks fishing from the bridge, and a cutting tool was needed a couple times for line fragments around the bridge - it is the Intercoastal waterway in FL after all, and you can certainly find some trash to pick up if you look for it. That said, none of this detracted from our enjoyment of the dives. For newer divers like us, this is also an interesting dive that allowed us to practice our skills and have fun with less exposure to risk. (I'm confident we could handle a CESA from 21'.)
Overall, I would highly recommend for three reasons:
1. the abundance of smaller sea life
2. the ease of access - especially if staying at Open Waters
3. simpler shore diving (even for less experienced divers like us)
