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At 06:13 AM 5/6/00 -0700, John Childress wrote: > Check out this story about the U.S. Navy dumping raw sewage into >Bassett Cave in Bermuda. > >http://www.accessbda.bm/01/01010102.htm > >John Some additional information on this cave is as follows: BASSETT'S CAVE, SANDYS PARISH Nelson (1840) depicted Bassett's Cave in his descriptions of Bermuda's caverns: "The largest and, geologically speaking, the most instructive [cave in Bermuda], is Basset's, near Somerset bridge. It is said to extend for more than a mile; but the first few hundred yards of toilsome progress usually satisfies the curiosity of the majority of its visitors. It seems to be comparatively recent, from the fresh state of its surfaces, and the small quantity of stalactite observable; this absence of incrustation, however, renders the origin of this cavern very palpable; namely, the undermining of the substrata by the sea, the waters or which lie in pools at the bottom." Lloyd (1835) mentions the first and only known caving fatality in Bermuda's history in this cave: "Near the sea-shore, I visited a large cavern called Basset's Cave; the entrance is wide, and lies quite exposed: after proceeding a little way, we came upon a spring of deep water, in which an unfortunate young man lately drowned himself. He had been missing for some days when his body was discovered by a favorite dog." A calcite-covered skull and beak of a seabird, the Strickland's shearwater, was collected from Bassett's Cave in 1907 (Shufeldt, 1916). Bassett's Cave, located on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Air Station Annex, is being used as a natural cesspit by the base for disposal of raw sewage and waste fuel oil. Sea level pools within the cave are covered by a half a meter or more oil, rising and falling with the tides. From: Iliffe, T.M. (1993). Speleological history of Bermuda. Acta Carsologica, 22(4):114-135. I visited Bassett's Cave in the mid 1980's and saw large pipes carrying raw sewage and waste oil into the cave. This foul effluent ran down across the rocks in the cave before disappearing under a lake of oil. The walls of the cave showed a "bathtub ring" of oil that was left by the receding tide on the otherwise white limestone walls. The oil in this lake was so thick that no water could be seen beneath it. I discussed this pollution problem with the owner of a local hotel that was set up to burn waste oil of any type in the boilers. They offered to pump this oil of the cave and dispose of it at now charge. When I approached the commander of the Navy Base with this offer, he turned it down. He said that before the property would be returned to Bermuda, some explosives would be found to bring down the roof of the cave. He was far more interested in covering up the problem than cleaning it up. Tom Iliffe At 06:13 AM 5/6/00 -0700, John Childress wrote: > Check out this story about the U.S. Navy dumping raw sewage into >Bassett Cave in Bermuda. > >http://www.accessbda.bm/01/01010102.htm > >John * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dr. Thomas M. Iliffe * * Department of Marine Biology * * Texas A&M University at Galveston * * Galveston, TX 77553-1675 * * Phone: 409 740-4454 Fax: 409 740-5001 * * E-mail: iliffet@ta*.ta*.ed* * * http://www.marinebiology.edu/iliffe.html * * http://www.cavebiology.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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