Shore diving near Miami

[choiahoy]

I’ll be in Miami for work in October and will have a morning free to dive. My wife will be with me and she gets seasick, so we usually shore dive.

Would you recommend we head to the Blue Heron Bridge or to Lauderdale? We’ll probably try to find a local guide; we’re not used to hauling dive flags.

 

[aquacat8]

Lauderdale By The Sea, it’s a lot closer than the BHB and as long as the ocean is flat-ish I like it better because it’s not tide dependent. Gold Coast Scuba can rent you tanks or whatever you need, often they arrange shore dives there so you may have some buddies. They use meet up for this, but you could call them. Check the wave height though because this is the ocean not the ICW.

 

[aquacat8]

Or if it’s really flat and you’re in Miami you could go down to Key Largo, it would be a boat dive but if it’s flat she probably wouldn’t get seasick… I say this because I have gotten seasick in Monterey and in the Channel Islands, but when I got to warm Florida with the gentle short boat rides to many sites I have not had a problem.

 

[sportxlh]

Dania beach has pretty good shore diving too. Gold Coast Scuba can give you advice

 

[tarponchik]

Look here for site descriptions. I second Dania beach (more precisely, this is Mizell-Johnson State Park).

 

[chaco6053]

Heres a helpful link that may help you decide

South Florida Beach Dive Sites + Locations

 

[Rred]

For your wife, has she tried the electric Relief Band?
It works almost as good as Scop for me, but you can turn it on and off light a light bulb. It isn't depth-proof, so I leave it on the boat and just put it back on again when I surface. But they're incredibly effective *if* you position them carefully. Look for the model with replaceable batteries, not the disposable one, if you do.

From Miami to get to Ft Laud or the BHB, you're probably going to use I95 and that *regularly* is closed for hours down there. Heavy traffic, frequent accident closures. About 45m to FL and another hour to the BHB, so heading down to Marathon instead may actually not be a much harder trip.