Every since my wife and I started diving in Bonaire, we have had a hard time wanting to book charters. Our income is a bit limited these past few years.
It is about a 2 hour drive for us to go to West Palm. Gas, food, charter, tip, etc. is roughly $100pp. In April we paid $1000pp for an entire week's lodging, rental, airfare, and UNLIMITED shore diving in Bonaire. Granted, we managed to snag a helluva good deal on plane tickets. Still, we find ourselves saving our play money for Bonaire each year.
When we did do charters, we typically dove with Narcosis in WPB. The dives with them were always wonderful.
A free dive that we sometimes do is the Blue Heron bridge down by WPB.
Scuba Shore Diving Site Page for: Blue Heron Bridge of Florida, USA East
Just check the tide charts and time your trip to catch the slack tide. I think the deepest I've found down there was only 21' and I had to find a hole for that. Still, the water is nice and clear and there is always something fun to find. Stingray, seahorses, octopus, schools of snook, angel fish, you name it.
Last time I was down there the East bridge was under construction but we could still explore under it, we just had to tie off our flag outside of the bridge. They had a floating barricade that the flag couldn't go under.
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