Question St Pete Bay Reef (or any other Pinellas near-shore reef) site info

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Craine

Just some guy who likes being underwater
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Divemaster
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Location
Largo, FL
# of dives
100 - 199
Relatively (9 months) new to the area and I’m looking for more shore diving opportunities off the peninsula. Pinellas County’s Artificial Reef information site lists all of the in- and out-shore reefs with their GPS coordinates. One that caught my eye was the St Petersburg Bay artificial reef, which is described as being around 30FSW andx “north of the St Petersburg Municipal Pier”. But from looking at the coordinates on Google Earth, it seems a bit far out and not really “shore-diveable” unless I get a diving kayak or similar. I have a standup paddle board, but it’s pretty tough to dive from (mostly a gear storage problem than anything else).

I’ve dove before with 2Shea/Tanks-a-lot for the out-shore reefs. I know I can go down to Bradenton or Sarasota for easy and good near-shore, and Venice for meg hunting. But having something closer by that I can dive while still being able to drop my kids off at school in the morning would be great. Most of the charters I’ve found nearby ask that you be at the dock early enough that I can’t do both on the same day.

Thanks for reading and any stories you have from shore diving in Pinellas County!
 

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Unfortunately, there aren't really any shore dives accessible from Pinellas. The SP Bay reef is likely the closest. The only other opportunities I can think of, are the Inshore Mitigation Reefs off of the Gulf beaches. They aren't, however, generally considered to be dive spots. Visibility is usually pretty poor, and they are fairly shallow. They are more for erosion protection and maybe hook and line anglers instead of divers.

http://www.pinellascounty.org/reef/pdf/inshore-reefs.pdf

The decent dive spots are in the gulf and tend to be several miles offshore.
 
I was worried that might be the case. I’ve been out to Indian Shores Reef, and have another boat dive coming up on the 2nd, so it’s not that I can’t. I was just hoping that there was somewhere I could go from the beach to ease the time commitment on dive days. Oh well.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/
https://xf2.scubaboard.com/community/forums/cave-diving.45/

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