Where do you muck dive?

[kelemvor]

Muck diving in Blue Heron Bridge looks awesome! Is November good season for muck diving in Florida?

Would you recommend a dive center that I can dive with? Is dive guide included?

Force-E and Pura Vida both have guides, I believe.

It's an easy shore dive, though. You can just park, and get in the water. The only significant consideration is to dive only for approximately 1 hour surrounding slack tide. Preferably, high slack. Otherwise currents can ruin vis and be tough to deal with if you get anywhere near the channels. Use the NOAA tide table to find out when this is.

In November, you might have to wear a wetsuit at BHB. Check the water temps before you go.

If you want to do a night dive there, you have to dive with a dive center. There is an operator inside phil foster park named "Little Deeper Charters". I've been on their boat before, they run a good operation. I don't know if they guide shore dives or not.

 

[Wingy]

Milne Bay Papua New Guinea - believed to be the place where the term Muck Diving was first used. Amazing place.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Force-E and Pura Vida both have guides, I believe.

It's an easy shore dive, though. You can just park, and get in the water. The only significant consideration is to dive only for approximately 1 hour surrounding slack tide. Preferably, high slack. Otherwise currents can ruin vis and be tough to deal with if you get anywhere near the channels. Use the NOAA tide table to find out when this is.

In November, you might have to wear a wetsuit at BHB. Check the water temps before you go.

If you want to do a night dive there, you have to dive with a dive center. There is an operator inside phil foster park named "Little Deeper Charters". I've been on their boat before, they run a good operation. I don't know if they guide shore dives or not.

Also Blue Heron Bridge Scuba. That's the one right there in the park that has the "concession" to operate there. I have rented tanks from them and also used Force-E and Pura Vida. All good. The only inconvenience for us out-of-town visitors is that we have to find some way to fill the rest of our day, since one dive per day at BHB is generally all that's possible. I have done a morning dive at BHB and an afternoon charter with Jupiter Dive Center.

 

[kelemvor]

Also Blue Heron Bridge Scuba. That's the one right there in the park that has the "concession" to operate there. I have rented tanks from them and also used Force-E and Pura Vida. All good. The only inconvenience for us out-of-town visitors is that we have to find some way to fill the rest of our day, since one dive per day at BHB is generally all that's possible. I have done a morning dive at BHB and an afternoon charter with Jupiter Dive Center.

That's exactly how I ended up diving with Little Deeper.

 

[Dan]

If you do it now, diving in Jupiter, you may still see some Goliath Grouper spawning. It's quite interesting to hear the underwater booming sound coming out of them during the mating season.

 

[DEEPLOU]

that was a great video from Jonathan. I met him once a few years ago at the Beneath the Sea exposition in NJ. He is even more personable in person. A real regular guy.

I do much diving out of Boynton Beach, which is a little bit south of Jupiter and West Palm. But even down there, they have the same aggregation. In addition, there are always many goliaths on the wrecks of the Bud and Tony and especially the Castor.
couple of years ago had a goliath take a fish out of my hand. No I wasn't feeding it, it just came up from behind me and grabbed it.

 

[Dan]

that was a great video from Jonathan. I met him once a few years ago at the Beneath the Sea exposition in NJ. He is even more personable in person. A real regular guy.

I do much diving out of Boynton Beach, which is a little bit south of Jupiter and West Palm. But even down there, they have the same aggregation. In addition, there are always many goliaths on the wrecks of the Bud and Tony and especially the Castor.
couple of years ago had a goliath take a fish out of my hand. No I wasn't feeding it, it just came up from behind me and grabbed it.

I always like to see these GG's (gentle giants). I was there in July. I'll check out the Castor next time.

 

[schwinnfin]

Some of you may wonder about what I meant by "muck dive". A quick search in the Internet you'll find this: Muck diving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I did muck diving for the first time in a dive site called Little Bight in Utila in August 2008. I got hooked to this type of relaxing, floating about a foot above the sand, while watching of interesting critters diving ever since.

Afterward I did some searching of other muck diving sites. I read a lot about Lembeh, Indonesia, which became well known for some of the best muck diving in the world by Larry Smith.

Being an Indonesian & living in the same state of Texas, where Larry was originally from, drew me even more to go to Lembeh and to meet him. Why would a guy from Texas goes half around the world to Lembeh? It must be a good place to muck dive there.

Unfortunately Larry passed away a year before I even knew about what muck diving is all about. Here is a bit info about Larry Smith's obituary and how he made Lembeh famous for muck diving: Larry Smith passes away in Indonesia ::

I did finally got a chance to muck dive in Lembeh on July 2011 and again in November 2013. I'm not very good in taking pictures, nor videos, so to those who are interested to know what you may see in Lembeh, I just post a link to one of the best, most complete documentary video of Lembeh done by a professional videographer and narrator, Nick Hope. Here is the excellent, must see, 92-minute video of Lembeh by Nick Hope of bubblevision.com:
Another cool muck diving site that I went, here in USA, is Blue Heron Bridge (BHB) in Jupiter, Florida. Here is another excellent (fortunately short & sweet) 13-minute video of BHB by Jonathan Bird of Blue Wold:
Another good muck diving place that I dove in is Secret Bay in Gilimanuk, Bali, Indonesia. You can search some of the cool muck diving video in YouTube about this place.

My next one will be in Ambon, in November 2017.

So, if anyone have gone to some other cool muck diving sites, please share.

Thanks
Dan

The Milne Bay area of Papua New Guinea has some great muck diving sites. We've been there twice and are totally hooked. Since then, we've been to Lembeh and several times to Blue Heron Bridge. It's like a treasure hunt, always new things to see if you go slow and take your time.

 

[schwinnfin]

Muck diving in Blue Heron Bridge looks awesome! Is November good season for muck diving in Florida?

Would you recommend a dive center that I can dive with? Is dive guide included?

We dove with Pura Vida divers and had a guide the first time we went. It helps to get an orientation to the site and the tides.

 

[schwinnfin]

Muck diving in Blue Heron Bridge looks awesome! Is November good season for muck diving in Florida?

Would you recommend a dive center that I can dive with? Is dive guide included?

We dove with Pura Vida divers. It helps to have a guide to get a good site orientation and information on the tides.