Coming up, the Blue World team goes into one
cave…and comes out another! Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World! It’s a cool morning in north Florida, with
steam rising off the warm Suwannee River. This section of Florida is known as Cave Country,
because it’s made of porous karst limestone, and full of caves. There are hundreds of caves here. Zach, Todd and I are heading out for a day
of cave diving adventure! We are meeting up with our good friend Wayne
Kinard who is taking us on one of his favorite dives today, so we head over to his dive shop,
Amigos Dive Center in Fort White. Hey Wayne! Good morning Jonathan! How are ya? Doing well! You ready to go dive Peacock? Yeah man! It’s going to be the best day ever! Let’s go! Let’s go! Alright! First we rig and fill our scuba tanks. And put all of our stuff in poor Wayne’s
truck. Next it’s off to Peacock Springs. We might be able to do a dive in the access
road! It kind of looks like a swamp at first. Even from the air it doesn’t look that inviting. But this is a really popular cave dive with
easy access provided by a beautiful set of stairs. So Wayne, tell me what we are going to do
here today? Well, we’re at Wes Skiles Peacock Springs
State Park, and we’re at a place called Peacock 1. We will make our entrance here, right in the
Peacock 1, and we will swim through these tunnels, passing a place called pothole where
there’s some deer bones and other animal bones, until we reach Olsen Sink. We will then surface at Olsen and compare
our thirds and how the dive is going and then turn around and come back in the same route
that we took back to the exit of Peacock 1 where we originated our dive. So what we are doing today is called a traverse,
where we go in one cave entrance and pop out another. But the second entrance is close enough that
we can make it on 1/3 of our air supply, so we can turn and go back again, on the same
scuba tanks. We start by carrying our gear from the parking
lot down to the cave entrance. I can’t wait to get in the water! This is going to be great! Well, the good news is, at least there’s
a set of steps. That makes it a lot easier. Next it’s time to suit up. Wayne huffs his big backmount doubles down
to the water, but Todd, Zach and I are using sidemount, so we will don our tanks in the
water. You ready? Alright! The water in the spring is pretty green and
a bit murky, but as we drop into the cave, it’s much clearer. Like most caves that see a lot of divers,
there is a stop sign at the edge of the cavern zone, warning people to go no further without
cave training and equipment. We get our cameras white balanced and follow
Wayne into the darkness. Almost immediately, Wayne finds a blind cave
crayfish! Over thousands of years living in caves, these
little crustaceans have lost their pigment and eyesight. This species grows to about 2 inches and is
only found in Florida and Georgia. Even though it can’t see me filming, it
can sense my presence and moves away as I get close. As we progress further into the cave, I feel
like I’m swimming through an enormous piece of Swiss cheese. Over thousands of years, water flowing through
these passages has slowly dissolved the limestone, making the passages larger and larger. We are careful not to kick up the silt on
the bottom of the cave, which would ruin our visibility. Wayne leads us to a little shelf that the
local divers call “the pothole.” This is where people have placed bones that
have been found in the cave for easy inspection. Wayne holds them up but he can’t tell me
what they are, so I’ll have to wait and ask him after the dive. This one looks like a turtle shell. And this one looks like a cow skull. He carefully puts the bones back where they
were for other divers to see, and then we continue on our way. Soon we reach the 600-foot arrow. Line arrows always point the fastest way out
of the cave, so this one is telling us that the entrance is 600 feet back the way we came. The cave passages are getting larger in this
section. And it doesn’t take us long to reach a double
line arrow. We are now exactly halfway between Peacock
1 and Olsen sink. Both line arrows point the way out. 700 feet either way. So we keep following the line, towards Olsen
sink, through some pretty cool passages. We enter a low section of cave perfect for
sidemount, but Wayne manages to fit with his back-mounted tanks. Soon we can see some light at the end of the
tunnel ahead. Wayne goes first, up through a small opening
towards the surface. One by one, we all emerge into Olsen sink,
a tiny blue pool in the middle of the forest. Woo! Oh man, that was great! Yes, super great! That’s a long swim! It is. A lot of interesting creatures down there. Well, I guess we should head back, we’ve
got a long swim. It’s been a great day, lets head back. Wayne leads the way back into the cave. We kicked up a bit of silt squeezing through
that small restriction, so we have some murky water to get through. But soon we pass back into the nice clear
water in the cave, and begin our long swim back to the Peacock 1 entrance. On the way out, we have the current at our
backs, so the swim is easier. We make good time. When we enter the low section again, I notice
pockets of our air have collected on the ceiling, looking like liquid metal. The limestone walls are an ancient seabed,
so they are full of fossils and shells. Finally we make it back to the stop sign in
the cavern zone and we ascend back to the light of day. Woo! That was great! That was really amazing! How long do you think it would take to explore
all of the caves here at Peacock? Many weeks. Lots of hours. This is an amazing place and I think the terminology
is…it’s like Swiss cheese. And It’s even the right color! Pretty much. Fun stuff! Fantastic. Well thank you so much, that was great. Now it’s my least favorite part of diving…slogging
all my gear out of the water and back to the van. My trip to Peacock Springs was a great success,
because not only did I get to go cave diving, but I also did my first traverse, swimming
all the way to Olsen sink. It’s only 1400 feet (just less than 5 football
fields) away, but in a cave, that’s a pretty long swim. Fortunately, there was a lot of cool stuff
to see along the way. Cave diving is one of my favorite ways to
explore the Blue World! Hey Everyone! Thanks for watching our latest episode all
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