Uncharted Waters Floridas Aqua Caves

this is the Earth's final frontier vast dark and silent a mysterious world deep beneath the Florida peninsula a hidden world of haunting beauty without air or light a world that time for God only now will its secrets be revealed as an elite team of divers prepares to explore the uncharted waters of the Florida aqua leaves the Florida peninsula in many ways a Waterworld all its own a river snakes through dense forests to its source one of Florida's extraordinary freshwater springs a remarkable eight billion gallons of water rise from the springs daily and yet the true mysteries of Florida's underwater world lie even deeper still 90% of the states drinking water some of the purest water in the world flows from the underground Springs these freshwater reserves are home to a world of unique wildlife manatees seek the warmth of spring water all year round following it up the river in winter and an ancient gar can date his ancestors back over 200 million years this ultra pure water is the wellspring of all life across the peninsula having nurtured these lush ecosystems throughout the ages but where does so much pure water come from it is a popular but extremely dangerous area attracting serious divers from all over the world to explore the vast network of serpentine tunnels beneath the springs the water is crystal clear with near perfect visibility an astonishing 160 feet a hole almost 23 feet in diameter opens up at the bottom of the spray this is the entrance to the Springs primary underwater tunnel torrents of water pour out of the tunnel into the spring progress is slow and difficult once inside an arrow cave opens up stretching out horizontally far into the distance it is a world of utter darkness where absolutely no light enters at once haunting yet serene out of nowhere a ghostly crustacean falls to the silty cave floor an albino crayfish living all their lives in total darkness these bizarre creatures lack eyes and pigment entirely nearby are the fossil remains of a much more forbidding creature a four to five tonne Mastodon ancient cousin of the elephant that roamed this area during the last ice age fossils from tens of thousands of years ago remain perfectly preserved moving deeper into this unknown world the cave splits into many different tunnels at an underwater intersection with an official traffic sign forbidding public diving beyond this point in Florida over 300 divers have lost their lives exploring this intricate maze of underwater tunnels most of them lost their way and ran out of air before they could find their way back to the surface one highly name is George Irvine a 48 year old stockbroker almost every weekend he gathers the most accomplished divers from all over the United States and goes where no man has ever gone before Irvine is the leader of a project with special permission from the state to map Florida's complex network of underwater tunnels the team has 80 divers but only the most experienced divers do the longest and most difficult underwater explorations the remaining divers make up an extensive support team that helps prepare the equipment and monitor safety the project has these battery powered scooters that allow research teams to maneuver through deep passageways at three times normal speed team members come from varied backgrounds ranging from scientists to businessmen since 1990 when he started researching the underwater tunnels Irvine has made over 2,000 dives and he holds many world records for exploring some of the longest underwater caves on the planet it's like walking in the woods and wanting to see what's over the next hill you just want to go a little further I don't see what's there and when you do that you want to see what's over the next hill and over the next hill and around the next corner behind the next tree it's just uh it's curiosity their laboratory is in the Florida Panhandle an area that stretches over 450 miles to the Gulf of Mexico the Woodville karst plain more than 50 springs have been discovered here George's goal is to explore every one and to create the definitive map of this vast network of underground channels their next location will be Indian spring only about 65 feet in diameter it's one of Florida's smaller Springs to document these remarkable expeditions a film crew will follow the team as far into the veins as the less experienced divers are allowed to go they're expecting a dangerous dive with reports that deep beneath the spring is a cave so immense it can hold a 747 Oh first types in one of these Springs normally this will be too dangerous for a crew will only be allowed in the spring accompanied by the research team at a depth of 115 feet there is a small hole at the base of the spring wall this is the entrance to the underwater tunnel it's a tight fit with tanks and the film crew just barely makes it through with their bulky high-def cameras on the low ceiling and not to touch the bottom and kick up dirt that would cloud up the water the ceiling is pure white like many of the caves it's made of limestone we are progressing deeper but when you dive through an area surrounded by walls you start to lose feeling of depth and direction it gets very claustrophobic the team is now 500 feet into the underwater tunnel at a depth of 140 feet erosion of the limestone is especially severe in this area resembling a falling rock zone with debris piled high on the cave floor falling limestone is always a danger in these tunnels posing a serious threat to divers with some of the rocks the size of automobiles past the debris field a huge space opens up the walls of the caves suddenly drop away and they are floating in nothingness a huge cave appeared before us we've never seen anything like it being weightless - it was almost like floating in space we lost all perspective it was hard to tell up from down this cave is so huge that no one to this day has been able to film it the legend is true it is big enough for 747 you water that runs in these tunnels originated as rainwater a long time ago it's soaked into the soil percolated into the underlying rocks then seeped down into the underground veins it can take tens of thousands of years for water from a storm to drain through the earth down into one of these tunnels the earth acts as a natural filtration system that keeps the water clear and pure water this pure can only be created over such a long period of time under a great sea coral and shells settled to the ocean floor to create the limestone layer then during the Ice Age the sea-level lowered creating land over hundreds of thousands of years as rain fell onto the land the limestone gradually eroded forming the underwater tunnels that stretched below the earth in the depths of Florida's limestone springs over time our vines elite team of divers plans to explore and map every known spring taking several months to research each location George Irvine works out for two hours each morning in preparation for the weekends arduous adventure the dives are dangerous and exhausting work the divers must be in excellent physical condition it's not uncommon for the total diving time to last for more than ten hours and that's if all goes well in October of 1991 the project's original sponsor Parker Turner was buried in a landslide and killed George Irvine was diving in the team ahead of Turner's and made it out of the cave just in time had he been delayed even a little he would have been killed as well if I'd been four minutes later I would have been trapped behind that restriction I never would have made it through I'm much bigger than those guys I never would have fit through I would have been dead after the accident George was determined that no one from the project would ever fall victim again he constantly checks and rechecks all safety procedures divers are chosen according to the difficulty of the expedition only the very best tackle the most dangerous exploration they are supported by team members in the water and on land the support divers are always standing by at the surface and ready to respond in case of an emergency I think that we've put together enough of a sophisticated organization and a safety plan that I'm not concerned about getting killed by virtue of the dives that I'm doing this is something I do I don't I don't worry about it I don't think about it I organized it and planned for it and executed research teams always have at least two or three divers how far they can go is limited only by their physical endurance and the capacity of their tanks each dive is a race against time when entering a new tunnel they use a rope to measure the distance from the entrance it also Orient's their forward progress and acts as their lifeline in case of accident the second diver is responsible for securing the rope to the rock face so it can't become detached which could leave them stranded without any idea how to exit the maze the team leader normally George gathers the data on each spring at each point the Rope bends he measures their depth and uses a compass to mark location and direction other team members enter the data into the computer later they'll create maps of the underwater tunnels for every spring they explore so far the project has investigated thirty-five springs in the Woodville karst plain their research has revealed that underwater tunnels connect 27 of the springs across more than 20 miles farther south they reach the Wakulla spring one of the most active in the region a dense forest blankets the ground around its surface four billion gallons of water is propelled into the wok Ulla Spring everyday this is the largest volume of any spring in the Woodville karst plain beneath the spring they hope to find a vast underwater tunnel the source of such massive amounts of water research in the Wakulla spring will be extremely dangerous while Kula is the deepest spring in the area divers will be buffeted by intense water pressure at the lower depths the spring itself is 150 feet deep a 15 story building would fit easily inside of it the tunnel plunges even deeper still to a depth of almost 300 feet at those depths water pressure compresses the gas in tanks which reduces the tanks capacity the pressure at 300 feet is 10 times the pressure at the surface so divers have one-tenth the capacity in their tanks the greater the depth the longer it takes to surface because divers have to decompress slowly from that pressure this is gonna be deeper than we've been so far safety is paramount and changes the camera crew will only accompany the team part of the way it's real critical that we watch our time in our gas or gas is going to be going so much faster than it has up until now because we are deeper an extra meter is attached to the tanks to carefully monitor the amount of time each diver has left the dissent feels like a freefall they quickly dropped 150 feet to the bottom of the spring and locate the entrance of the underwater tunnel we usually go down only to 140 feet so from here we were diving into depth that we've never experienced before what looks like a crack in the spring wall is the entrance to the underwater tunnel the massive amount of water that surges into the Wakulla spring all travels through this narrow hole the team forces its way into the vein once inside a gentle slope leads down to a depth of 230 feet as the water pressure increased we started to feel our diving suits pressed against our bodies ten minutes into the tunnel we finally arrived at the depth of 290 feet when we breathe and the air from the tank study to feel sticky as water pressure condenses the gas in the tank it becomes denser and feels thicker the tunnel Forks into two paths one to the right one to the left it's as if they've arrived at the entrance to an underwater maze divers from the project will continue exploring deep into both Forks but this is as far as the amateur divers in the film crew will be allowed to go at these depths resurfacing can be even more difficult than the dive itself once they emerge from the tunnel into the spring their ascent will take two hours to allow for decompression decompression means readjusting your body to less pressure as you resurface at great depths compressed gas in the tanks fuses into the bloodstream by surfacing too quickly the air and the bloodstream would expand forming bubbles the result can be fatal the longer they dive the longer it takes to decompress and so the divers wait with patience being more than a virtue here it can save your life the project team has spent nine months mapping the Akula spring as part of the overall effort to create computer reproductions of every tunnel they explore starting at 150 feet the tunnel slopes down and plateaus at a depth of 290 feet the camera crew heads back accompanied by members of the support team from here a complex web of underwater tunnel snakes in all directions away from the Wakulla spring up to now the project has identified 13 tunnels in the network they've already explored 18,000 feet almost three and a half miles into the largest tunnel a world record at the time but it stretches much further still further than they ever imagined and they now the project team believes a bizarre incident 25 miles away may be connected to their research at about 4000 acres Lake Jackson was a quarter the size of Manhattan Island then suddenly in September of 1999 something astonishing happened all the water disappeared in just two days this is Lake Jackson before the water disappeared shocked by a local resident this is Lake Jackson today photographed from the same location a Florida Geological Survey team has returned to the drained Lake to investigate they explore a hole right in the bottom of the lake and a cave that drops 40 feet straight down from there the cave stretches out horizontally like many in the area it shows the classic signs of chronic limestone erosion off the cave stretches an underwater tunnel below the lake the Geological Survey emerges from the cave with a working hypothesis for years rocky debris and possibly one enormous boulder plugged the hole in the lake bottom but after several years of drought the level of underground water slowly lowered causing the debris that was plugging the lake to lose its support from below and eventually fall through the hole that opened the floodgates the lake water quickly emptied out through the tunnel then one month after the water disappeared from Lake Jackson strange things start to happen at some of the springs in the region at the WA Kula the level of the spring suddenly rises and it's previously clear water turns cloudy the moment George enters the water he realizes how green and cloudy it has become visibility is less than half of what it had been on his last dive here and to the force of the water rushing out of the tunnel is so strong George finds it difficult to proceed he decides the dive is too risky and calls it quits until he can prepare his team for the more perilous conditions the team hypothesizes that the water in the spring turned cloudy when Lake Jackson emptied and all those billions of gallons of water poured through an unknown tunnel into the Wakulla 25 miles to the south their research suggests that the underwater tunnels originating from the Wakulla stretch primarily toward the south perhaps as far as the Gulf of Mexico 15 miles away here a vast amount of underground water springs out from the ocean floor 13 underwater springs have been found in just a 1,500 foot radius water rushes out of a crack in the ocean through with the force of an erupting volcano and it's difficult for even the most experienced and most fit divers to proceed eventually the team hopes to connect one of the wou coolest tunnels directly to a spring in the Gulf of Mexico project research has also developed a more troubling hypothesis in recent years an aquatic plant called a hydrilla has been multiplying at an alarming rate at the WA Coulomb it's now so dense it's beginning to destroy the ecosystem at the spring their alarming new hypothesis pollution is being spread through Florida's vast network of underwater tunnels one clue to the mystery is the waters unnaturally high level of nitrates a common ingredient in fertilizers used for lawns and golf courses and yet while cooler spring is surrounded by dense forest there are no homes or golf courses anywhere nearby so where could these nitrates come from state environmental officials believe they have seeped into the ground from miles and miles away and travel to the Wakulla through a still undiscovered underwater tunnel but they need proof to regulate against the pollution they must first demonstrate that the spring is connected by underwater tunnels to an area where the fertilizer is used cave divers will enable us to do a much better job of protecting Florida Springs because they're showing us information that that no one else can show us there's no technology at this point that can tell us about those caves underground after eight months the cloudy waters of the WA Kula finally clear up but now the project's research has taken on a new urgency the longest tunnel the team is found branching off the WA Kula is 18,000 45 feet about three and a half miles but project members now suspect another even longer tunnel could stretch as far as the Gulf of Mexico yet at depths of almost 300 feet where air tanks hold one tenth of their normal capacity exploring the longest of these underwater tunnels could prove beyond reach the plan calls for an extensive support team to dive ahead of George and his partner and to place extra tanks and scooters along the way 6:00 a.m. the support team starts lining up the equipment on the shore preparations for the difficult and dangerous dive begin to take on the feel of a military operation among the extra gear the support team will place along the dive route are 86 tanks and 34 scooters for two divers the complex expedition begins with a 20 diver support team taking the extra equipment deep into the main tunnel they'll place the tanks and scooters at intervals of about 1,300 feet or about a quarter of a mile apart altogether they're creating eight pit stops where George and his partner can rest briefly and take on fresh equipment when the support team has completed the first phase of the dive the lead team will penetrate about 9,000 feet into the tunnel switching tanks and scooters along the way from there they will begin to check the primary vein for any new Forks they could have missed on previous dives 10 a.m. George heads for the shore specially designed rebreathing tanks will allow these expert divers to stay submerged up to five times longer at extreme depths what's wrong George's partner is Jared Jablonski they have been exploring Florida's underwater tunnels together for almost a decade for this dive project scooters have been outfitted with cameras and lights so that George and Jared can continue to film after the camera crew has been sent back a final moment of quiet reflection before a long and dangerous dive it has been two years since they dove deep into the Wakulla will they be able to find a new tunnel will it lead to the Gulf of Mexico the water of the Bakula spring is crystal clear once again with visibility over 160 feet in water this clear the film crews high-definition cameras produce some of the most astonishing underwater photography ever shot at the surface the support team stands by 20 divers from the project and other emergency personnel are ready for any problems that could arise when planning the expedition George estimated a dive of five hours to cover six or seven miles George and Jarrett arrive at the 9,000 foot point almost two miles in one hour they quickly change tanks and scooters and are off again they are moving more slowly now painstakingly studying the tunnel for any signs of another branch they may have missed at 14,000 feet the film crew must turn back everything now is being shot by cameras attached to the scooters from here George and John proceed alone 14,000 265 feet into the tunnel the divers find a marker they left on their last dive and they notice a small hole near their marker on their previous dive but suddenly the bright lights from the camera reach deep into a side cave that stretches much further than they ever imagined meanwhile up above hours have passed and the support crew can do nothing but wait and wonder George and Jarret have found a new tunnel but more surprises await them inside they only proceed about 400 feet into this new tunnel when the walls suddenly disappear they shake their lights up and down left and right but just more nothing they have discovered an enormous new cave a power cave so huge it's dizzying the feeling you get is like being in outer space because no floor no wall no ceiling no you can't see ahead all you see is water everywhere you look and then I was thinking I'm being allowed to see what no one else can see and there's got to be a reason for that Jarrid in the lead anchors his rope along the wall but no matter how far they swim the cave keeps opening up as though there is literally no end in sight after they proceeded about 1,500 feet into the new tunnel jared stops he's out of rope coming up from behind George can't help laughing you asked me what do you want to do I handed him another real and we both started laughing you know because we're already three miles into a cave it's already ridiculous we've already added you know at that point 1,800 feet of line off this real and of course wouldn't wanna know like lures more cave George and Jared are exhausted it's already been a very long dive but they use the new rope from George as an inspiration to push even further into the game today the project will add a major new tunnel to the map and a new and rate and 40-feet the new power cave they've discovered seems headed south if the tunnel continues in this direction it would reach the Gulf of Mexico only 12 miles due south back at the surface the support team eagerly awaits the divers safe return they know virtually to the minute how long Jorge and Jared can survive it is long past their scheduled return time and perilously close to the point their tanks must be empty then round midnight the support crew sees light ascending from the depths below you and eight hours to decompress the dive George predicted would last five hours took a total of 14 it's a beautiful sight oh yeah but here in the main tunnel though - yeah and starts all over yet it has taken the forces of nature hundreds of thousands of years to create Florida's vast network of Springs and underwater tiles deep beneath these Springs there is a world of magnificent mystery with many underwater tunnels and power caves still waiting to be discovered and on the surface the blessing of pure crystal-clear water with more on the quest to find answers in the uncharted waters of the Florida aqua caves

Channel: Huang Low

Views: 15,194

Rating: 4.8980894 out of 5

Keywords: GI3, Jarrod Jablonski, Florida Caves, Cave Diving, WKPP, Woodville Karst Plain Projec, George Irvine

Id: 5Rg1IjQ5LVM

Length: 44min 15sec (2655 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2013