Ok, so Im a little bored and was looking at some more scuba pictures from when I got certified, and thought Id post a quick cave dive we did during the Cavern Diver cert.
Quick tidbit: I am a certified "Cavern Diver", not "Cave Diver." The difference is that as a Cavern Diver I have to have 3 light sources in the underwater overhead environment, being caves more specifically, although not excluding others (ships, etc). The 3 light sources are: ambient sunlight from the entrance, a main flashlight, and a backup. The first one is the limiting factor, being that when I reach an area far back enough in the cave that I cannot see ambient light from the sun, I have gone too far, and must go back. Cave divers may continue, but must have 3 light sources, being: Primary dive light, and at least 2 back up light sources.
So on to the trip. Went to the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area in Florida to do a cave dive. The only part we would get to do would be a single chamber in the cave, because it was too deep (for us) to get to the next part of the cave. It was about 150' deep at the bottom and we could do about 110'.
In order to get to the cave, we had to us this bad boy to get our gear to the entrance:
Its a metal cart that is battery powered and can carry all that gear through brush for about 15 mins. Then it dies...more on that in a bit. It was nice while it lasted though..ha. (thats me on the far left) There was a trail from where we had to park to the edge of a swamp area, so we put all the gear in that monster wagon, and started down the trail. Once we got to the swamp, we donned our gear and then hiked about 10 minutes through the sludge. Now that may not sound like a long time, but with a 7mil wetsuit in the heat of day trudging through goop and mire with a steel tank on your back, its kinda tough. Ha.
Heres after the hike about to get into the water.
I dont have a pic, but it looked like we were about to swim into some really low visibility swamp pond. We had to get our masks and stuff on, keep our fins in our hands, get on our hands and knees, and slowly move out to the deeper water. We did this very slowly in order to keep from stirring up the sediment we were in and making the visibility in the center of the "pond" much worse. As the water got deeper and we got near the center, it became much clearer, and very blue. It was amazing. Directly below us was the entrance to the cave. Across the entrance of the cave was a conveniently placed submerged log that made a nice seat:
So we met up there as everyone got to the center. Then we :snorkel:
A friend spotting for one of us to set up the line to follow:
From around 80' looking up at the entrance...I think it looks like an arrowhead.
We swam around for a bit in the cave, which was enormous inside. It was huge, with crystal clear water inside. We ventured down to around 110' and leveled off to take a look at the bottom, which was still a good 40' below us. At the bottom, the cave continued horizontally quite a ways, but that was well beyond the scope of this dive.
Me, on the way up. Somehow this picture ended up looking really cool to me, although it was accidentally.
Paul Heinerth with post-dive briefing:
After the dive we hiked back out to the monster wagon, and it promptly died. We had to pull it back full of gear to the cars, over quite rough terrain. The cart is pretty dern heavy without stuff in it, let alone gear for 5 people. So that was fun. At this point we started getting eaten alive by mosquitos. :ar15:
All in all, an awesome dive. Cave diving is quite an experience, but only when properly trained. Id highly recommend it.