The last week of August found four friends on the road to north Florida to sample more cave diving opportunities. The plan was to meet our mentor and instructor, Paul Heinerth, for a few days of diving for fun — no classes to take and no students to watch. Unfortunately, Paul was ill and could not dive so…regrettably, we left him on dry land and off we went into the deep dark yonder. Check out topside photos here.
We stayed at Dive Outpost which is a centrally located tank filling and accommodation station. Our first stop was Peacock Springs followed by a trip to Ginnie Springs and ultimately on to “Eagle’s Nest,” a dive site near Crystal River.
The first day of diving in Peacock had us swimming against a strong current to get in. About the time we reached the area where we had to pull ourselves along the bottom, we had a couple of light failures and wisely elected to stop the dive and go back. The next dive was to the same cave but better preparations with regard to cameras were made.
We traveled to Ginnie Springs the next day and were met with bus loads of college kids from the University of Florida. Their fun was in tubing the Santa Fe River in swimsuits. Our fun was in full body rubber wetsuits and going below to venture into the spring water that feeds the river.
We dove Devil’s Ear, Devil’s Eye and Little Devil. The cave water was crystal clear while the river water carried tannic acid (dark brown) from the decayed swamp vegetation, aka mung.
The last dive was Eagle’s Nest, a cathedral cave that is simply unbelievable. You drive about eleven miles through deer and wild boar hunting grounds to arrive at a “pond” that looks like a cesspool from the surface. (It’s not always like this — lots of rain in Florida this year.)
Procedure: Drive many miles through no-man’s land. Park in the middle of nowhere. Unload truck of lots of stuff. Gear up for caves. Enter the water via ten stairs. Buddy check everyone. Descend ten feet and follow the line to the cave entrance. Re-group. Descend through a chimney one at a time. Drop into the clearest, darkest, most beautiful underwater cathedral this side of the border. It is 200 feet by 100 feet. There is a permanent line running top to bottom. Along each side is a cave tunnel, one upstream and one downstream — beginning at 180 feet. (We did not go there.)
Along the walls of the dark cave are fossils of sea biscuits, sand dollars and sea shells. A few eels and catfish joined us but other than that, the mere wonder of seeing for yourself that this was once covered with ocean water is flabbergasting. Sit back and think about it.
Global warming and oceans rising? Think again…
Underwater pictures soon.
