Blue Heron Bridge

By The McGraths

Taking the day off from work and going diving is our favorite pastime. John and I enjoy spending the day under water breathing compressed gas. Today we are on are way to a new site, the Blue Heron Bridge. Being featured in Florida Scuba News and Leigh, our instructor pointing it out to us, we knew that we just had to check it out for ourselves. Blue Heron Bridge is in the Phil foster park in West Palm Beach.

Arriving at the dive site and looking around once again we are the only diver there. Blue Heron Bridge can be a tricky place to dive. One must wait for slack time or the current is just too rough under the bridge. Today the high tide was at 12:05 pm and we arrived around 11:00 am. Having plenty of time to get our gear together we just mess around until the current clam down. John being the stronger diver of the both of us would fin out to check out the current and once he was ready we both went out. This dive is control by the changing of the tides therefore, you only have about 50 minutes until the tide will change and currents pick up.

At the site we found many different types of creatures. We found a couple of octopus in bottles. John tried to get them to come out without success. The site is full of large cushion star fish and sea urchins and many different types of micro life.

Today the visibility was about 5 feet making a interesting dive. We explored the west side of the park by the fishing pier staying to the south side of the main bridge. We reach a depth of 14 feet and you will need to have your dive flag due to boat traffic and Florida laws. It is very important while diving this site to stay clear of the boat channel. If you wander into the boat channel the depths are not deep enough and risk of being hurt increase tremendously. With low visibility you must stay oriented to avoid this hazard.

The nice thing about the Blue Heron Bridge it only cost your gas and time visibility may be low but go slow and there is a lot to see and enjoy. After a great day of diving it's off to Lakeland once again. This dive site is only about 3 hours away making it possible to drive there and back on the same day. That's if your vehicle cooperates!