Weeki Wachee Cave Dive

you look at the park there's historical significance value about wiki Watchi it's one of these original Florida roadside attractions that had Mermaid what makes wiki Watch unique it's a first magnitude spring it's never been explored and it's absolutely drop-dead gorgeous this cave has the mystique of being the only first magnitude spring in the state of Florida's never been explored you can have 20 years of cave diving experience and what come in two week you watch it and never want to come here again unique to vici Weeki Wachee is the no other word to describe it but inviolate entrance and exit of this cave you have got to be on your game you can't go in here thinking this is a breeze I'm going to drop in scoot through the hole go have a fun dive so toughest entry of any cave system i've ever been in you have to sit there you get your mind right you pull you pull you pull very second your arms are burning and you know you can't pull anymore you pull one more time and you just drop into that game it's huge and the visibility being as good as it is as a bonus because you can see even some of the footage you can see the part of the floor part of the wall and part of the ceiling and that's just like 10% of the cave because the cave was too big to light up even though we had 500 watts of light power it just was like scratching a surface so it's definitely the biggest tunnels of any cave I've ever been in now there's some caves I have big room but this one here is big everywhere one of the other scientific goals that we hope to accomplish is identifying a lot of what appears to be dry formations whether or not their origin is petrified or the origin is actually fossilized at this point we don't know we can only speculate but approximately 2,200 feet in the cave there are draperies or what a dry cave or would refer to as a stalactite the formations that we found in Weeki Wachee are unlike anything we've ever seen an underwater cave systems in the state thus far the speedy Krebs speleothems bacterial formations they're unique because they've never been seen never been documented never been studied nobody still knows what they are they they believe there's some type of girth I'd formation which is iron based formation but they also believe that could have a very large bacterial component to it as well literally looks like the surface of an entirely different planet a lot of the formations have broken off the walls over you know thousands and thousands of years and made these beautiful symmetrical piles some of them are still attached to the wall there's other formations and you know growing off the floor and everything so that would be one goal is to really try to find out what occurred or is occurring in that part of the cave some of the goals for future dives is taking the survey that we've done thus far and making sure that it's precise we would like to give the state as precise a survey as possible on Saturday the second half of our team will be moving a radio location beacon into the cave it operates at a very low but powerful frequency and it's it's much like the radio locate that used to track polar bears but slightly different the magnetic field is obviously a lot stronger than what they would put around a polar bear's neck and what happens is the divers will place the location ring which is a large copper ring powered by a 12-volt battery in the cave and then on the surface we'll have what's called a tracking sphere or in this particular case disc and we will be able to more or less pinpoint exactly a surface to subsurface example of where the beacon is in the cave compared to where it actually is occurring on land okay the radio locate will give us a definite point on the surface that corresponds to to the cave and we use it so that the survey which has some inaccuracies in it now we have a point that we can correct everything to it all has to do with mapping out the system and making sure that it's correct the divers under the water they're carrying a beacon that actually sets up the signal so they carry that an electronics pack and they plug that in set it off and then it sends the signal up and what they have to do is just make sure it's level as if it's tilted to one side then the signal is going to be off to one side so they want to make sure it's perfectly up and down once they get it set up they just leave it and then we come along on the surface we can hear that signal and we look for actually what we call a null there's where there's no signal and that tells you where the beacon the right in here is where we think Scheck's folly is according to the map it should be right right in this area here level it out is real sill the area so kind of nasty so if our map is right though the junction is right back there in those woods it's very very sensitive that's inside of a building it seems to be yet right in here someplace in this area hey yep I think it's right there how far that is he 260 feet so yeah 260 feet below you there is oh yeah big hole Weeki Wachee river well I had a scooter out to about 800 feet to the first tee which is a distinct mark you in the cave and it goes up to about hundred ninety feet still don't know if it's successful or not but we turned it on and waiting here from you guys the decompression excluding bottom time is just over 13 hours the bottom time at this point is planned for three hours so for a total just over 16 hours of total run time how long as long as that you've ever done this will be it there is no portion of preparation for exploring 28 one of the deepest caves the United States that's fun it literally isn't until you're finished and there is a sense of accomplishment and something that you can bring back before everybody can sit down and say hey it was worth it but until then it really isn't uncomfortable and sometimes you know miserable a thing to do one of the interesting things about a little butt up about our teams is that we're all different ages we all come from different backgrounds we all have what we call day jobs some of us have night jobs but we all come together to do this for the love of what we do my wife is an attorney I build software Brett washes Windows Paul teaches scuba diving scott Pulliam builds houses we run the gamut and it's all this shared appreciation this beautiful natural resource that you don't find anywhere else in the world at Florida it's just not been Duyvil for so long to finally have a chance to dive here you know it's like having access to the forbidden fruit all of a sudden it's not forbidden anymore you know so it's like doesn't what's the word I'm looking for and they're nirvana of a chance to go do something that's just been out of reach all this time all of a sudden it's it's reachable so and and it's you know in terms of entries it's a toughest entry of any cave system I've ever been in know no matter what part of the world like I've been there's so much water come out here it's hard to imagine that you know we're able to get in once the flow is below a hundred cubic feet per second and so if you think about a hundred cubic feet our second hitting you in the face it's uh it's hard to imagine we're able to get in when it gets that low which is really not that low but it doesn't take much more than a hundred and it's not possible for us to get in it got as weak as 93 cubic feet per second so that's the weakest it's ever been the strongest has ever been is like 265 so it's quite a range there but the the size of the opening has always been the same size so I can't even imagine trying to get in when it's flowing it at the maximum rate now the reason why the drought is bad for Florida obviously is for agriculture people who live here and the fact that all of our water in Florida comes from the Florida aquifer a lot of people think just because you're on city water that somehow it comes from some other magical place when it actually all comes from the Florida aquifer and the big problem is is we pull water up from the aquifer in some cases the water can be over 100 years old but it certainly takes a lot longer for rainwater to make it to that depth so we're pulling a pure water at a higher exchange rate the nature can naturally replace it it's a problem Southwest Florida Water Management the state are trying to work on and it's a big problem the reason the drought is good for us obviously is as you'll see the spring throughout the documentary you'll notice that even though it's beautiful blue and pretty it's it's over a foot shallower than normal and currently we're looking at just about a hundred CFS which means 100 cubic feet per second coming out of the spring under some conditions in the past the spring has been up to or close to 250 CFS and so you can see why that would be beneficial for us the the opening at the bottom of the crevice before you actually enter into the cave the opening at the bottom of the crevasse is about the size of a Volkswagen bugs hood or the size of a barroom table and so even at a hundred cubic feet per second coming out of an opening that big we have to move all of our equipment through there including ourselves and it takes a specially trained group of individuals and a lot of patience and time to move the gear in move the divers in and of course move ourselves out in 2007 we literally had three days of rain and within the fifth day the spring was practically under bubble we could start experiencing a normal rainy cycle or have several hurricanes and we may not be you know it could be beyond my lifetime the next time this window of opportunity opens you

Channel: Kyle Wybel

Views: 6,408

Rating: 4.9444447 out of 5

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Id: w3xyyig0SCs

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2016