Divers React to Super Tight Cave Dive

hello everyone my name is gus hi i'm woody today we'll be reacting to one of our dives actually your dive because i was there just for surface support i had an ear infection at the time however i'm glad i had an ear infection because there's no way i would have fit through this thing i'm a little speechless because i want to word it carefully yeah i would love to have had you in there but i also in good consciousness i know what it took for me to go through there and i weigh 139 pounds that's going to set up the video i think yeah and by the way really quick so we can get to the video we took inspiration for this dive from jonathan bird wouldn't i have done it with her he led the way jonathan you led the path man we reacted to his shangri-la dive with todd um and they did a great job they shot this cave we were mesmerized by it you were like when are we going maddie take me there well maddie took you there so woody and maddie went diving in shangri-la which is the tightest cave in the middle pond in mariana florida and they filmed the whole thing both of you had uh mask mounted cameras yeah the little pair of lens on our mask so people are gonna get to see their perspective like you know whenever you see you will have the dual camera action it will say woody or it will say medi on the bottom left corner you will see what they were seeing so whatever you're seeing that's what they saw maddie was typically in the first position and i was typically not a hundred percent of the time typically in the second position he was leading the the charge so let's go ahead and get started and check out how you guys did okay so you know obviously at the very beginning gus it's it's pretty open and it's actually very beautiful like it's clear it's clearer even than some of the other caves in that area this line that he is tying off wasn't kind of important in this dive i absolutely used it it was a lifeline in and out and the tie that you just saw maddie do by the way is called a secondary tie off which is near the entrance to the cavern but not all the way on the open water the open water ties the primary tie off he actually tied it into the pole where the boat was anchored to or tied to and the secondary was near the uh the entrance to the cavern we do that in case there's swimmers or somebody you know an alligator bites it off or whatever they buy off the uh the primary the secondary will be tied near the entrance so even if you make your way to the secondary and then find the line floating away you still are able to check that out look at this look at maddie doing this whoop clipping off the rock look that is amazing and i've never done that and i will always do that hey look look at the paws look at the paws i'm about to do well mine's not working um listen it's so clear doesn't that look like we're not underwater just in that moment besides the particles and the bubbles unbelievably clear yeah but that changes look at that look at that clear at your volume man that is so beautiful right there it's just perfect visibility going in incredible i have a feeling that it's probably not going to be like that for long all right so mehdi uh continues to do tie-offs along the way until he reaches the primary line on the cave which in florida this is not globally and i know some of you ask whether this is a global thing in florida primary line phone case are typically gold they're gold color we call it the gold line we are not wearing our rebreathers we are wearing side mount open circuit we did not feel frankly that we would have enough room to wear our rebreathers right even though our rebreathers are sidewinder side mounted yep and medy said that he tried this on a sidewinder before and he didn't get too far there's no way we would be able to do it with a sidewinder i i don't think after what i went through with this both width and height even the a little bit gusts of additional height of the canisters above the tank you know on the sidewinder that little bit that would have been at the oil breaker that i i think so i mean all right so now just to tell people what's happening and this is woody uh behind maddie uh medi has tied his line to the gold line and now you move in to the goal line for exploration so we are never going to be off of the gold of the gold line in this cave we're gonna always have that line in other words within visibility or holding on to it so i'm just checking his reel wow this is what maddie saw that's right like i never got to see this so fish in there this is the first i've seen like the front view super clear i did never saw the inside of this cave this is the first time because i'm behind metty so wow so he's checking on you and there you come very very tight in there see so you see how tight this area is just wait this is the big portion okay so he's starting to get into a very tight area this is where my visibility will be gone maddie and i set up a communication system with our fins so if medi for example was stuck and needed me to pull him out he would click his fins really really fast get me out get me out get me out because there's no like hey are you okay with the lighter coming up next to him and vice versa i would have the same communication if i saw his fins were still working even with this limited viz i left them alone wow reliving this i'm just like i don't know if i want to do it again and here's where he's at is the restriction where if you saw the jonathan video uh the jonathan bird and todd video on this dive this is the restriction where they turn around they saw this is too tight we're gonna have to remove tanks the tanks they were carrying were bigger than the ones uh maddie and and woody used for the dive um almost twice the size and they were like at this point we're gonna have to start taking tanks off so they decided not to push the guys decided to push through it and you can see how tight it gets and how bad the visibility goes did you can you tell that i'm trying to be way way up high because i want to film eddie in front of me but look at it i'm going to lose this big time this is like the best viz i had and i'm just staying up high so i can try to get him it just kind of keeps getting narrower and narrower and i remember being in there and pausing when i could see and saying how am i gonna get through that like i was blown away that you guys made it through that restriction and not only is such a small restriction that these guys decided you know we're going to turn around which was the right decision by the way for them is that you then went through that restriction blind you're going through a restriction right now and as you can see nobody can see anything at this point i couldn't see i was whole i was holding that line that main line that gus pointed out and i knew many was in front of me and if i would move up too much i could feel his fins look at his lid this is what he saw yeah there's the cave i never saw it's beautiful in there wow maddie that looks nice you by the way you have to pull along the bottom i don't want you to think we're violating cave rules there is no room above you yeah what are you gonna do i had a little little opening i remember that little pop moments of this that would open us i love it there's a cookie there okay oh so this part which between two rocks so this part there do you see how you kind of have to go up and a little bit like up and down you have to contour your body like a yeah like an arc a little bit there to get through and that may have been where they stopped i i can't remember we went to the end of this main line so we went as far as that line went and that's what we turned it's slow moving man i mean you met he's doing a great job you just got it slowly and i know that he's trying his best not to stir up oh yeah silt or anything but well his head is probably touching the ceiling or all right so the guys have been gone now for about 10 minutes and i can tell they're hard work in there and i'm going to show you why so when we got here the entrance to the cave the water looked like this totally still clear yeah perfectly fine that's how it looked on the entrance to the cave now let me show you how it looks now 10 minutes later no way oh dude that's awesome you did that's what oh my goodness that was awesome i did not know he did that all the silk blowing out very cool gus that was cool look at this do you understand i'm having to do that with my head being squeezed through there i think at this point matty's telling you to back out or turn around or something i don't know if we're at that point yet um until you guys reach the end of the line okay anytime you see by the way my what looks like an angle like a change the angle that's me turning my head sideways so i can move do you understand my camera is like this so i'm squeezing so i'd have to go like this so now you're gonna it looks like the cave is turning but i couldn't get my head through wow yeah you're pushing back and that was the only way by the way was to push slowly because you can't turn around there there's it's not wide enough it's not with wide whatever do you hear that do you hear some what sounded like some purging yeah both from eddie and i at times i'll just describe it imagine my head face down pushing against the bottom of the cave because the top is so tight it's like pushing the purge button that's what happened yeah and for those who don't know uh the purge button is actually on the front of the regulator so when the rail is in your mouth you have a perch button which is basically to perch water out of the regulator so you can breathe so if you take the regulator out of your mouth or it gets knocked out or whatever when you put it back in it's full of water if you try to breathe you will be you will breathe water basically so we hit the perch button gets rid of the water and then you can breathe so that's what he's saying the ground was hitting the button against his face the ceiling and the ground sandwich in your head there was the line you just saw go by and i'm being quiet because i want you to hear me i there's sometimes i'm like because i'm like i gotta the ground to move this is maddie so now he's second so look at his viz but we had already screwed it up going in now we're gonna get to a point soon where we're gonna stop i'm in the front and we had what's called a line trap the line if i just followed it which i had to takes me to a spot where i can't move i'm wedged in and i'm like i don't know what to do and watch how we work this out so woody one of the things people are uh that are watching this are thinking is like why do this like why this this doesn't look enjoyable but it really is see i really enjoyed knowing that many knew this cave that there was line already in this cave we're not exploring so i wanted to see can we go through it and we had done very significant planning beforehand it was a blast even when i was in that stuck moment i just kept remembering what mike young said every move you make after that stay totally calm and it must be deliberate so if you're gonna move your right hand that had a purpose then stop and think because you can't panic at all because you could kill the guy behind you yeah he can't get beyond you yeah so just stay calm but i gus i loved it everybody like i truly loved that we were able to do it and use all of our skills and we weren't going into an unknown passage it's just very tight very tight um the other question that we get a lot is are you not afraid that the cave can collapse like it's two slaps of rock it could just sandwich you right and what do you do if that happened i mean i think that people really i don't know i don't know if they take pleasure in this but they like to kind of back us into a corner like uh like if we would have a hard time accepting that look if the cave decides to collapse that day then we die i mean it's just it is what it is it's like if you're going over a bridge and that day the bridge collapses and you plummet to your death and die it is what it is skydivers right pulled the parachute that was the day that both of them didn't work yeah there are risks we can't sit here and say to anybody we're not risk takers we are this is an adventurous risky activity but we we seriously went through a lot of training and we were with a true expert we didn't i didn't go in there by myself right and and also again these caves have been through floods and dry seasons and earthquakes and i mean these caves have been here for thousands of years right in order for these caves to form is water making these holes inside the earth so yeah you're not going to have like a small earthquake and this cave is going to collapse that's not how this works now this this is the spot where i get stuck it you saw that he just picked up his cookie we're back at his line so i'm following his line the problem is his line is going to have to make a sharp left but i can't get to that left i'm too wide out to the right so you can't just follow the line it's a line trap so at some point i've gotta i'm gonna get stuck which is probably like right now look not really moving and if you notice you're using your heel against the ceiling to push and and gus i just i got to the point where i just couldn't move anymore so i had to think about what to do and why am i stuck when i'm following the line and that's when i decided i'm going to back out and ask matty let's go where do i go what do i do yeah this is the part that i think most people are afraid of is to be between rock and rock and so stuck that you're like i don't know what to do and i respect that yeah but i i always had a little bit of movement i'm trying to see if i can hear my here we go but you can even you can even hear on woody's breathing that he's not panicking he's not hyperventilating oh my god what's that just take it easy like you said just this is a sideways turn of my head or i would be not able to get my head through that's why it's angled i was having to wedge out with my head turned yeah that's me on the line like i'm not letting guy want that line i remember that there sometimes you get the question what happens if the line snaps is not very common the lines are made of nylon and it's pretty thick nylon it's not climbing climbing rope it's not that thick but it's pretty thick um and you actually learn how to repair line on your cave diving class so you snap it you can repair it okay so i back out i'm like one second let me go yeah you're like yeah go because the other funny thing was clearing your mask right you can't look up it's clear so i i was just like maddie i know you need me just give me i just wedged myself one second i'm let me get my mask unclear to it and then absolutely yes you go through because i needed to know where is the left turn right so i don't get line trapped so we were we communicated really well together the line it's over there that's the signal for line by the way two fingers like that so i move far over the right as i can so he can pass so if you want to tell somebody to reel the line you do this real the line or if you want to ask somebody where's the line you use your finger like this question mark where is the line that's how we communicate in a cave or where is woody number three or number two or whatever position he has in the cave and the cave diving team i love that you went back and forth with the cameras and just did that in the editing because it really tells the story i'm waiting way over there man that whole time stuck you're like here's my reel exit is that way you're like all right good job nice dive yola you want to go or no there's another there's another portion and you're like i'm down to two thousand so you're telling him i'm down to two thousand psi he's like i'm gonna pick up their line you go and you said okay with the light exactly all cave communities exactly no and people are like why don't you guys use full face masks if you guys were using full face mask in this cave there's i don't know we were stopped at earlier than that this would have been a three-minute dive uh and second you see that they can have a whole conversation without having to talk to each other and in words uh by the way they're they're um they're on open circuit but when you're diving when we're diving the rebreather we can talk more on the ribri there's a lot easier to communicate full words so we don't need a radios or anything like that here you can start to see the light so we're moving into the cavern zone you see the light up above there so we're basically in the big area again yeah we're back in the cavern but there's more to come it's not over yet wow i'm just wondering would i do i want to do this again like i want to do it again if somebody else can experience it with me because i want them to see it but i it's not like i have this burning desire like we did it it's cool it's the smallest cave by far that i've ever done and maybe that i ever will do yeah and when people think about cave diving in most cases they're thinking about stuff like this where you're wedging yourself in through the tightest things not all capes are like that as a matter of fact most caves are pretty open and yeah some caves will have some restrictions and then you go through them and they open up again into a bigger room so uh it's it's a lot more enjoyable when you can be on a big cave especially if we can use our scooters or dpv diver propulsion vehicles because you have that thing that is swimming for you right you're just enjoying the cave and just hanging on to it definitely there's maddie's line there's the light so at this point i'm gonna be a good buddy i'm gonna untie the ties for him and i'm gonna take the slack out of the line so it's easier for maddie to reel it but he's he's right on me like you see i don't have to do it for long that he's a very fast participant i'm like oh you're already here so yeah so on a cave diving team i mentioned this before everybody has kind of like a responsibility the lead diver the primary guy uh is the line man so he puts the line in and also is the last person out first one in last one out has to deal with the line the second one helps with the line and confirms the lines are tied correctly and all of that and you'll see here i'm looking underwater that he's i don't know he's five seconds behind me and this is where you ended it yeah but this isn't the end of the story totally this isn't the end of everything that happened at shangri-la there's a couple more smaller dives that you guys did searching for leads and different things uh apparently there is another exit at shangri-la if you take some little tunnels you can go up to the surface uh i don't think we're getting out of that exit though somewhere else tanks on yeah but uh this was the main dive at shangri-la it was it was about 20 minutes long and i wanted to show you guys that um however we will have the entire experience of shangri-la there's a lot of footage that we've recorded outside the water too where we were just talking we were on the boat or even before like when we were we were at cave adventures like setting up the tanks and all that stuff there's a lot more footage so there's an extended version of shangri-la of this whole trip which is available to members so for those of you who are members go to the members only playlist and there's an extended version of shangri-la where you can enjoy this thing and those of you who are non-members uh yet please consider becoming a member membership start at three dollars a month uh and really help us go on these trips and record more content and again our plan is to not only release extended versions of these videos for members but also make them ad free so if you watch the member only videos there's no ads are not monetized whatsoever so you can watch the whole thing without interruptions which is pretty cool so consider becoming a member today all you have to do is click the join button right below uh pick a membership level they all come with different perks and stuff and but all of all of the memberships level include access to all the members only content even the one we've released before you became a member you'll have access to everything but that was a great dive it was super tight i'm happy i did it right now sitting here i feel good that i did it i feel very good that i did it with maddie but not better than you felt when you got out of that thing i mean i felt i re i'm not gonna lie i i remember when we got back to the exit on this one there was a sense of okay that was another level you know what i mean i'm really glad i had betty and that he with his experience and his prior uh diving of this cave and again jonathan if you're listening you gave me the confidence to go you did it first so i was like okay you know i'm kind of a smaller guy i can do it and you sort of described well you need a really low profile and that's when media and i decided to go open circuit so a lot of thought went into it and um i'm really happy i did it i have to tell you absolutely i hope you guys enjoyed this video as well shangri-la was what our fourth cave right out of seven of this tree they're on the merit mill pond yes uh but there are some other caves that are also they have some tight passages although not as tight as shangri-la like for example we did a dive and this one we did together the couple weeks before we went back to shangri-la um where we went to twin caves pretty awesome dive my favorite cave dive of all time beautiful because it was you know technical in the sense of big passages small you know impossible not to sell that it was like a combination of everything uh there was dpv there was swimming there it was uh an entire experience or twin caves dive and in case you haven't seen it i'm gonna leave it right here you guys can enjoy it and we'll see you on the next one bye everybody

Channel: DIVE TALK

Views: 117,627

Keywords: SCUBA, IANTD, TDI, NAUI, PADI, SSI, Tec Diving, Tec Diver, Tech Diving, Tech Diver, Cave Diver, Cave Diving, Open Water Diver, Scuba Diving, Scuba Instructor, Dive Instructor, Dive Talk, Woody and Gus, Rebreathers, Cave Divers React, Tight Cave, Shangri La, Shangri-La, Merritt Mill Pond, BlueWorld

Id: JLAyVYCca_U

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022