Looking for Places to Snorkel in Miami-Dade County

[biodiver18]

HI my name is Alain. I just moved to Miami and am looking for places to snorkel from a beach. If there is a place that you recamend please leave the beach from where i can access it. I am looking for any artifical reefs or sea grass beds. Thank you very much.

 

[LowVizWiz]

Welcome to the board!

The beaches down south don't offer much in the way of a reef line, you'd have to swim out pretty far to see anything. You could try Key Biscayne, but I wouldn't seriously consider this an option without a boat.

If you drive up to Dania Beach or Ft. Lauderdale you could enjoy nice reefs. A lot of board members dive these beaches.

You may also want to try going south to Pennekamp Park in Key Largo.

Wys.

 

[biodiver18]

Dania Beach, from there on the beach you can access the reefs? Thank you very much. I think im going up there next weekend. Any other places you would recamend

 

[DennisS]

There's an artificial reef off of Mercy Hospital. I'm not sure where you would access it, there's no beach near it. Possibly one of the parks in the vicinity

 

[biodiver18]

thanks. Up near Dania beach there are the Erojacks? How are those artificial reefs. If anyone has been there how far off shore are they.

 

[DaveWomach]

I'm very interested in free diving near Miami as well. I live in Orlando and haven't had the chance to since I moved there. I got to scuba the Spiegel Grove in Key Largo, but haven't had the change to free dive. My limits are around 60'. Do you free dive around those depths? If so, let's plan a day to go. I also spear fish, and woud be interested in finding people to fish with too.

 

[leo]

I live on SoBe, so I know the area a little bit... and I've not found anything to snorkel anywhere, other than maybe some marginal snorkeling along the rock jetty at 1st St. beach. Otherwise, it's all sand from Ft. Laud. to The Keys to my knowledge.

There's no shore snorkeling at Pennekamp.

There is one new mooring ball on SoBe, at about 4th St. (?), but there's only a few large bricks in say 15' water just outside the no-boat swim markers.

I would love to learn something new.

 

[kirkryan]

Lauderdale by the Sea at the end of Commercial Blvd has a nice beach access point just south of the pier. If you're looking for sea grass beds you can probably pull over at any of the side parking lots off Overseas HWY en route to Key West. Bahia Honda State Park has some ok shore snorkeling if you don't mind any structure.

 

[pharo]

There is a cool section that the guys from the snorkeling boat miami ocean rafting put on their site with detailed info how to get to the reefs and wrecks from shore in the Miami Beach and KeyBiscayne area here is the link: Places to Snorkel in Miami

 

[Nearshore diver]

Here's a video I made of the Ero jacks. I am coming to dive again at the end of January if anyone cares to join me.