Gulf coast dive sites near Ocala/Crystal River FL

[mullannix930]

I have some family that moved to Ocala, and as such I now have a place to stay if I come to FL. I'm looking for info on dive sites on the gulf side that would be near the Ocala area. I'm looking for Gulf sites not the freshwater sites (I have checked on those). I haven't seen anything from that area of the gulf.

 

[bamafan]

The Gulf in that area is shallow so you have to go a ways offshore to get to deeper water. The Middlegrounds are as good of diving as you can find in Florida but finding a boat to run that far is hard to do. It takes a large population base to support dive boats and that area simply doesn't have it or the large tourism base like Panama City Beach or Key Largo. You will probably have to drive a ways to find a dive boat. Tampa has a few as well as the East Coast. There use to be a guy who ran charter spearfishing trips to the Middlegrounds out of that area but I can't remember his or the boat's name. Hope you find something.

 

[Yancey M]

There's some good sites off Cedar Key which is just north of Crystal River about 15 or so miles off. I have dove there a few times as vis is decent. The sites are more suited for spear fishing. They are small clusters of concrete culverts that general have quite a bit of marine life on them.

The sites I've dove are around 30-35 fsw.

 

[100days-a-year]

http://myfwc.com/media/131585/reefs.pdf
Here's a start,If you have a boat Offshore Hunter GPS software has enough spots built it to keep you busy for a while.