Welcome! I grew up north of Boston, but didn't dive in the several decades I lived there. The Coast Guard, and a transfer, brought me to New Orleans, and I took up diving after taking classes locally, mostly Gulf shores and Florida east coast. Also offshore from the TX/LA border, on a liveaboard out at the Flower Garden and Stetson Bank Marine Sanctuaries way offshore (which I do recommend, it's actual coral without leaving the US).
But on visits to family, I've braved the cold water, rented thick neoprene and dived in Mass Bay, Woods Hole and Cape area, and Rhode Island at Fort Wetherill. One trip I will recommend is the sunk coastal tanker CHESTER POLING, OFF Gloucester. She broke in two and sank in a much-worse than predicted winter storm in January 1977, and the Coast Guard saved six of seven crew, at great risk to themselves, in mountainous seas. If you go, read up on it first, and it might mean as much to you as it did to me.