#scuba
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Blue Heron Bridge — The Best Shore-Access Dive in the Continental U.S.
Walk into the water under a highway overpass in Riviera Beach. Eighty feet later, surrounded by manta rays, frogfish, octopus, and the occasional sea horse, you're going to wonder why this isn't on every dive site list ever made. Tide matters.
Jupiter Drift Diving — Where the Gulf Stream Carries You Past Bull Sharks
Three miles off Jupiter the Gulf Stream pulls within reach of the continental shelf. You drop down, drift two knots over reef and wreck, and surface a mile from where you started. From January through March, bull sharks ride that same current.
Jupiter Goliath Grouper Spawn — Diving the August Aggregation off Florida's East Coast
Every August through October, hundreds of 400-pound goliath grouper stack the wrecks off Jupiter, Florida to spawn. The full moon densifies the gathering. The boom of their territorial call hits you in the chest at 90 feet. It is one of the great fish aggregations on Earth.
Lionfish Hunting in the Lower Keys — Eat the Invader, Save the Reef
Drop sixty feet onto a Lower Keys ledge in May and you'll see them on every overhang — fanned, striped, unhurried. Florida wants you to spear them. No license, no bag limit, no closed season. Take the pole spear, take the ZooKeeper, take a frying pan.
Vortex Spring — The Panhandle's Cavern-Diver Training Ground
A 50-foot basin in the Florida Panhandle that pumps 28 million gallons of 72°F water a day and hides 1,600 feet of cave behind a steel gate. Open-water divers swim above the gate. Cavern students train through it. Cave divers, with the right card, pass it.