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I was present, along with George Irvine, Steve Irving and Barry Miller at the meeting, held during the NSS-CDS seminar, at which Jim King unveiled his proposal for "Wakulla - II". Jim may not have the end of any lines anymore, but he certainly must be given credit for coming up with an extremely clever if outlandish scheme. At first I thought he was putting us on and then when he showed a slide of the saturation diving system and described a project Mohole scheme to bore directly into the A tunnel of Wakulla Springs, I realized this was for real. Present at this meeting, and apparently members of the consortium of individuals involved in this project, were John Zumrick (the spokesman), Wes Skiles, Tom Morris, Mark Lenard, Larry Green and Jim King (Bill Stone couldn't attend). Most of these people were involved in the first big Wakulla Exploration Project and are featured in the book (of the same name) published in 1987 describing the chronology of the project. The most recent issue of Aquacorp contains some of the reprinted material from the original publication. Just the very name of it; "Wakulla-2", was suggestive of Hollywood's fixation with producing sequels to successful films and adding the ordinal designator to the original name. My thoughts drifted off to what Jurassic Park -2 will be like and then snapped back to full focus when I heard the 10' diameter hole described. Why there would be publicity, videos, television specials, all sorts of equipment for the dive teams, high tech rebreathers and generally endless visions of sugar plums and Christmas Eve, ad infinitum. During the first part of this session George was thoughtful, deferential and even polite, but I could hear the round slide into the chamber and the bolt slam shut when Wes Skiles starting talking about bypassing WKPP and going directly to the Governor's office and Zumrick was suggesting how he could have their engineer take a look at our Gavin scooter to possibly redesign it. Oh yeah... and George could be the dive operations manager and John Zumrick's bat boy. Was this for real? Depending on your spin, what I thought we were hearing was that WKPP's access, permits, resources and people were somehow irrelevant and what was really needed was for for some "serious players" to step up to the plate. It was another one of those "step aside boys, the experts have arrived" deals. WKPP is Wakulla 2,3,4 whatever and many many more projects combined. It exists to promote conservation and knowledge of Florida's aquatic resources and to produce scientific and exploration results for its members and sponsoring organizations, whether they be educational institutions or government agencies. WKPP is a non profit organization which seeks involvement from a broad spectrum of people of diverse backgrounds. It does not exist for the personal aggrandizement of certain individuals. WKPP welcomes the participation of Jim King and Bill Stone and many others who may have significant contributions to make. The Director, although he might entertain certain procedural and philosophical differences of opinion does not preclude anyones participation, providing that they follow the safety standards and policies and procedures established by the WKPP. Even Tom Mount, IANTD president, who has tangled publicly with the director over many issues, will be diving with the WKPP and fully supports WKPP's broad agenda. Forget about Wakulla 2, join the WKPP. - WWM
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