You know, I think the most impressive feat in the entire film was when
Boyd Madson managed to silt out Ginnie Springs. Now THAT takes some
doing!

From the film itself, they didn't appear to accomplish anything else.
We never got to see this so-called map.  They didn't tell us where
the cave goes, or how deep.  They didn't tell us how far they went.  
The didn't tell us if they even did any exploration at all (e.g. new
cave).  In fact, the only statistics that I picked up were dive time
duration and deco duration.

-Kent-

Joel Markwell wrote:
> 
> And you said . . .
> 
> > If anybody missed Comedy Central's guide to diving Wakulla on TBS last
> > night, I have the tape. My respect for National Geo went down a notch or two
> > after watching that.
> 
> Amen,
> 
> Now I have to back up and think of all the dramatic BS I have been buying
> out of
> NatGeo all these years. The Wakky II Show was such BS. They left out what
> had been explored, Stone's promise to "tripple" the distance, their
> actual distance effort that got them, what 9k, HALF the WKPP distance?
> They left out Kendall's death, the diver's death in Huautla, the history
> of problems with the electronic rebreather, that the WKPP's distance was
> using 'breathers of another sort and what the difference is. And Boyd
> Madson silting out Ginnie! Now THAT is choice!! They just need the
> dreaded "cave shark" to round out the dangers of cave diving. But they
> got Stone's actual mission in life right, Space Cadet. If he wasn't so
> dangerous to his own people, it'd be funny.
> 
> The way the show was structured, the heroic effort to map Wakulla that
> succeeded through many trials and tribulations...such drama, will they
> succeed? The nasty low-vis dive, the raging flow that nearly defeated the
> perky Jill Heinreth and then they finally get to "the end." Oh, so I
> guess there's no more cave to discover, right? SHE GOT IT ALL!
> 
> I give them their due that the divers who made the longer dives did
> something that not everyone can do. And I wonder about the mapper, how
> well did it work? If there's anything to this, it will be the mapper, but
> as the magazine article suggested, even if Cis-Lunar perfects the mapper
> to be the state of the art, it will be the WKPP who will be the divers
> who will actually have the skills to USE it! Otherwise, Stone's
> leadership into a new era of hi-tech cave diving technology is pure BS.
> It may be someday that a technology _similar_ to that will make inroads
> into diving technology and be safe and effective, but today, the choice
> seems pretty simple. Even forgetting everything they left out of this
> show, just the problems they had with the scooters and the rebreathers
> and the diver breathing O2 deep in the basin. These are all problems that
> I get the sense that the WKPP ironed out long ago. The Halcyons work, the
> Gavins work and the team mentality works without all the drama that
> accompanied the Wakky II gang. Maybe that's why you guys don't get the
> big press, it just looks too easy.
> 
> Keep up the Piker Weekends.
> 
> Later,
> 
> JoeL
> --
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