SCUBA DIVING near JFK Airport, NYC

SCUBA DIVING near JFK Airport, NYC.  The title is almost an absurd concept to those outside the Diving community.

There are many secrets about the NY area.  This is one.  Set 100 Beach 8th Street, Queens, NY on your GPS.  Far Rockaway inlet.  Went there today with my buddy Kirby Kurkomelis.  

Kirby is a friend of the Staten Island Sport Divers and lives near this little jewel of NYC.  Diving in this area, one does not expect the 200 foot visibility of Little Cayman.  If you have 5 foot, you go.  Those were the conditions today.  This is a place you need an orientation for as the navigation is literally by wire.  Visibility is usually better.  Perhaps up to 20 feet I am told.

Beach 8th street has a ridiculously easy beach entry from stairs, you walk onto the beach and then descend. It doesn't get easier.  But you need to be shown how and where like any local site.

There are cables laid out underwater that you follow to different destinations depending on your agenda of training or reef seeing.  I met Di Deiter today and he had a class of divers as well.  He has a cool website that outlines diving here.  Di has published a map and other info on his site above.

This is a tidal site and there is current.  Contact Kirby or Di for the correct tide tables to use.

Make no mistake, this is NOT PALAU.  This is not the most diverse place on earth.  But it was a delight to see Kirby find and present a Seahorse to us in the first three minutes of the dive.  There are large Blackfish being caught, we saw tropicals like Butterfly fish and the usual Northeast suspects.  Sharks have been seen nearby and no one has been bothered.

Diving here is truly an NYC experience.  There are lots of local fishermen that help compete for the limited parking.  If we find sinkers or lures underwater, it is a good gesture to cut them from the rocks underwater and offer them to the fishermen.  I asked "who has not caught a fish" to one group of folks I offered and gave them a sinker I found.  Good will goes a long way.  It is a fun crazy scene on the weekend.  Get there early for parking but get an orientation from someone who has been there before you.  It is an hour from Staten Island.
JA