Blue Heron Bridge

The dive is built around the tide rather than a route. Gulf Stream water comes in twice daily on the high tides, flowing through the inlet into the Intracoastal Waterway and carrying exotic, biodiverse marine life in to settle in the shallows, so divers enter off the beach in the roughly two-hour window around slack high tide and are out before the currents build. Visibility in that window typically runs 20 to 40 feet (12 m), though it can drop to a couple of feet or open up past 24 m (80 ft) depending on conditions.

There is no depth to manage: the bottom averages around 5 m (15 ft) and the deepest point is 8 m (25 ft), so the limiting factor is gas and patience rather than a profile. Most of the diving is spent hovering over sand, rubble and structure looking closely at small things — lined and longsnout seahorses, striated, ocellated and dwarf frogfish, Caribbean reef, Atlantic longarm, brown-striped and common octopuses, and over 100 recorded species of nudibranch and sea slug.

Bigger animals move through the same shallows. Spotted eagle rays and nurse sharks pass over the sand, and goliath groupers turn up occasionally. Novice divers, freedivers and experienced divers all use the site, and there is convenient parking just off the beach, so you can gear up on a tailgate and walk directly from the beach into the water.