Diving the Blue Heron Bridge
I organized another dive trip to South Florida for the Orlando Reef Divers for the purpose of enjoying the sites of the Blue Heron Bridge. I had dived this bridge which crosses the Intracoastal Waterway of Riviera Beach, FL back in 2012. I’ve been wanting to return but it takes planning due to the tide schedule. The trip I organized consisted of two dives the first being a dusk/night dive and the second being a dawn dive.
I was able to get four other divers to join me and we hired a dive guide, Becky, for the night dive. The dive site is technically the snorkeling trail of Phil Foster Park. Finding parking was chaos as the park is multi-use and the Saturday evening when we were meeting at the park it was absolutely packed with people enjoying the beach. It’s interesting that the beach is actually mostly under the bridge.
After finally getting parked, Becky was able to herd our divers under the bridge for a short orientation before getting into the water. We entered around 7pm and the high tide was at 7:43pm. We swam out to the rocks with a slight bit of current due to the incoming tide where we hit sets of rocks. Shortly after we reached the rocks we lost two of our divers. This stressed everyone out and we surfaced to discuss. Our dive guide almost called the dive as our searching failed to find them. Luckily, after about 5-10 minutes the lost divers rejoined our group and we were able to continue. Also, this dive was very shallow so the interruption didn’t really impact the overall dive.
At the rocks we saw tons of enormous arrow crabs grazing around clumps of sargassum, some spotted moray eels, stone crabs, and various tropical fish. We were heading east for a bit and then we turned north. That is when we crossed paths with a batfish which is a very odd fish. Continuing on we came across some pipes and a couple of octopuses that were waiting patiently before they went hunting. I guess it wasn’t dark enough yet.
We made our way under the bridge where the pillars holding up the bridge were covered with life as well as tons of structures such as pipes and scuttled boats gave tons of hiding spots for creatures. This is where we came across the bobbit worm which crawled out of a hole and when I first saw it, it was only out two inches but it kept extending to about two feet when it snatched something and in a flash was back in its hole. That was nightmare fuel.
The tide was starting to go out and we could feel the current picking up so we headed back to the beach over the grass patches. We came across boxfish, cowfish, mantis shrimp in burrows, and a striated frogfish all in an area that was loaded with swimmers about an hour earlier. I then encountered an Atlantic longarm octopus. I could have spent an hour hanging out with this guy. It was curious and stuck around for the minute or two that I had to watch it. The rest of the divers had gone to the shore so I reluctantly left the octopus and joined the group.
The following morning we got to the park around 6:15am so that we could get into the water by 6:45am as high tide was 7:48am. The parking was far easier but there were still quite a few people, mostly divers, getting ready to go into the water. I set a rule that if you were going to leave the group that you informed me and everyone agreed so that we didn’t follow up the issue from the previous night.
Once we got in the water it was amazing with the dawn light shining through the wavy water. We followed a similar path to the one we had gone the night before. Some of our group saw a turtle and spotted eagle rays but I did not. I did spot a batfish (I think it was the same one but who really knows), an octopus (this I think was one of the ones from the night before as it was in the exact same place), and various other interesting fish. I saw a mottled filefish under the bridge, though I'm not sure of the exact species. There were also a huge school of bait fish swimming around with a little barracuda attempting to snatch one of them. The final significant fish I saw was a filefish in the seagrass that was attempting to act like a sea plant.
Overall, both dives were excellent and make me want to do more diving at the Blue Heron Bridge. Also, I had purchased a macro lens (diopter) that I FINALLY figured out on the morning dive and that made me even happier.
