Welcome to the neighborhood!! While it's definitely NOT the Caribbean, I think your son will like it here. For shore diving in freshwater, you're going to have to head inland about 2 hours, either to the west or southwest, to the numerous springs/sinkholes in north Florida's "Cave Country". Fortunately, some of the best sites over there are within State parks which are pretty inexpensive (< $10) to dive. To shore dive in salt water, the closest places are about 3-4 hours south down I-95, as the coastline here is dominated by a lot of salt marsh which is better suited for fishing and kayaking. As for the beach itself, it typically has much more wave action than other places in Florida, which makes for some good surfing. The closest decent salt water shore diving starts down around Ft. Pierce and stretches south along the coast all the way to Miami. As for offshore of Jacksonville, in the wintertime the water temps average in the upper 50s and the boating weather is frequently rough. Nevertheless, around late March/early April the conditions start to improve which signals the start of our diving "season". Water temps top out in the low-mid 80s in mid-late summer and don't drop back to the 60s until late fall. With that said, northeast Florida does have some great ocean diving (though you need to be AOW for most spots) with numerous artificial reefs and even a few wrecks that are home to some of the best spearfishing and bug hunting in the state. The only downside is there are currently only a few charter ops to pick from and you usually have a boat ride of about 8-10 miles out to get to the closest sites. Lastly, take a minute to check out our local meetup group "Bubbles Up Jacksonville". We're a pretty active bunch with a wide range of diving experience within the group and regularly come up with a variety of opportunities to get you acquainted with the local environment, meet some new buddies and most importantly - dive, dive, DIVE!!
