Difficulty
beginner
Viz (last reported 21263h ago)
Max Depth
Unknown
Snorkeling and Scuba Diving at Blue Heron Bridge
You must bring a flag and they don't allow scuba in the swim area in front of the lifeguard stand. If you go off the beach and to the east you can dive the little bridge, or you can dive to the west of the beach around the pylons under the larger portion. You can also go east an west around the anchored boats and find a couple little ones that have sunk. You are going to want to get in about an hour before high tide to get the most out of the slack tide. You can dive either East or West of the Park. Do not enter the boat lanes!
As you go east on Blue Heron Blvd., you will go over the bridge and Phil Foster Park will be on your left. As you turn in stay to the left and you will park near the bridge. You will set up in the parking lot and go off the beach. Night diving is only permitted by boat, you cannot cross the beach after dark.
Blue Heron Bridge is also known as Phil Foster Park.
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shore
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Nate Ewigman
Feb 14, 2012, 12:00 AM
scuba
In my mind, this is a perfect dive site. It is by far the strangest site I've dived in a very good way. I spent about 5 hours on the reef during 01/2012 and explored the entire site - I felt like I needed that much time. I see the dive site in three distinct parts. 1. The E side of the park is where all of the sailboats are, and the bottom is sandy/muck with occasional coral growths off of anchors and trash. While it doesn't sound appealing, it's incredible, and the most likely to see beautiful seahorses. I also saw a 9 ft manatee with my fiancé! 2. The S side (in between the sailboats and bridge) is muck diving, and is a little hit or miss. But I'll say, that's the first dive I'd do next time because that's apparently where the frogfish hang. Giant starfish, many rays (one really big one!). You'll get this part in transit from the E or W side. 3. The W side has thousands of tropicals, great corals (highly active!) on the bridge. Barracudas, rays, amazing shrimp and crabs. I swear I saw a giant hermit crab. Explore the entire bridge - include the pilings to the N of the larger bridge that you come to first. There is a wonderful rock pilings where I saw 2 batfish, octo, eels, etc. Got a little twilight action in on this side, and the reef starts to change. I would imagine the night diving to be spectacular. General advice: FOLLOW the advice to be in the water 30 minutes pre high tide (you can still get a 2 hour dive in as the MOD = 18 ft or so) as the current can be impressively strong, go REALLY slowly, please as always don't touch anything (such a fragile and beautiful u/w community at BHB) or take anything of course, the photographers always know where the cool stuff is but don't crowd them, night diving is not allowed without a shop that has a license on special nights, this is probably obvious but given that most of the dive is very shallow I found it helpful to have a few lbs more on me (and I had more neoprene because the temp in Jan was 68 f). Enjoy, this is a national treasure and should be protected (IMHO) from fishing and boating in certain areas.
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