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Snorkeling and Scuba Diving at Beach 8th Street, Queens
A Paradise Not Lost
By Bob Sterner (http://www.sternereditorial.com)
http://www.nedivenews.com
What's old is new is the good news about Almost Paradise. Beach 9th Street, Far Rockaway, Queens, N.Y., is back to being called Beach 8th Street, for the traditional hole in the fence that's given so much pleasure to generations of divers, local fishermen and kids splashing into the cool eddy between the jetties that form the site. Diving here no longer costs $20 a head for everyone in the car to park in the now closed Almost Paradise lot, although I'd still be glad to do so for the showers and facilities to rinse salt out of gear while getting a burger and a soda after a nice dive.
Riding the tide change to the bridge and back is discouraged in post-9/11 days, although serious tautog spear-fishers still return from there with dinner. At least they know what they're bagging. Shore fishers bring home lots of dinner too from this thriving patch of sand just off JFK Airport's runways. When dinner divers miss a shot, they missed it. When shore fishers lose a fish, their bottom tackle stays on the bottom hooking and killing sea creatures for decades.
A fish killed wantonly that Barbara Krooss caught me looking at not long ago tells the story of glittery bottom tackle underwater. It's there to kill generations of fish unless you cut it off and remove it from pilings and other underwater obstructions. It might sound counter-productive, but you can make friends with the shore fishers who hate you for blowing bubbles around their favorite cast sites if you return the bounty of hooks, weights, spinners and other lures that they lost underwater. At the base of the piling where this fish lost its life to a lure we found a horseshoe crab barely alive and hopelessly snarled in a tangle of fishing line. It didn't stick around for a portrait after being freed.
Otherwise little has changed at the humble beach where thousands of divers have earned their c-cards. Divers still queue up a half-hour before high and low slack tide for optimum visibility. Many still avoid the crowd by diving as the current runs by ducking behind pilings. It's great training for low-vis conditions at a place where you can't get lost so long as you can follow a compass needle north to the shore. At mid-channel, high-tide, it is about 40 feet to the surface, but you don't want to go there because of heavy boat traffic. Lobsters, crabs, flounders, bergals, sponges, mussels and plants galore that drew divers to this humble site decades ago are still there for those willing to venture through the hole in the fence to see what's beneath the waves of Reynolds Channel.
See more photos and stories of diving this and other sites at Sterner Editorial (http://www.sternereditorial.com).
Found in the Rockaways, near JFK Airport in New York City
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Eightreale
Jan 27, 2009, 12:00 AM
scuba
I have been diving on beach 8th street since 1980 long before almost paradise came along and ruined it! For years the same smiling faces showed up on a regular if not daily basis to dive. We had no worries about our cars, our kids knew each other and we all looked out for each other. One of the dive shops would organize beach cleanups where we would remove all the trash we could find from the water and beach. Afterwards they would feed everyone. The entire end of the street would be filled with divers and families sharing BBQ and stories and the occasional cerveza (AFTER ALL DIVING ACTIVITIES). The came for almost paradise and from that moment paradise was lost forever. We were forced to either pay this guy or you could not dive on a beach where we had dived even long before I came onto the scene. He put up a fence to block access and if we decided to dive from the wall he would call the cops to harass us. Ironically this was supposed to be a divers service center but that did not stop him from allowing the launching of jet skis right from the beach that divers were using! The best thing that ever happened there is the closing of this lousy facility. Good riddance Jay wherever you are! Now that things are somewhat back to normal I take my thirteen and eighteen year old sons there. Unfortunately for the years that Jay was there a lot of seasoned divers stopped going there. Hopefully they will return and bring some new friends.