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WKPP set up and conducted a long-range exploration dive in Wakulla
Springs this past weekend. We were hoping for blue water , but what we
got was an even better suprise: the whole cave was outflowing strongly,
and we were able to follow down the sources of the dark water, the A
Tunnel "Ramp" and two infeeders to the O Tunnel, to be explored later.
The exp team of Jablonski , Scarabin and Irvine was able to scour the
entire wall surface of the O Tunnel out to Cherokee Sink ( just shy of
11,000 feet out) while checking each lead. Two clear springs were also
found. One of these looked at first like a large tunnel going around
Cherokee, but necked down into a tiny spring. We now know where to
continue the exploration.
Having settled in with our new rebreather ( Halcyon) rigs, and our new
scooters, we were able to cover the same distance a lot faster while
getting more done. I used a total of 97 cubic feet of drive gas (11/55)
to roundtrip the 180 minute ( three hour ) bottom time, and 40 cubic
feet of each deco gas before going to open circuit and a sidemount rig
at 50 feet, finishing the 50 and 40 foot stops on the same bottle,
before going to oxygen in the habitat. That took one and 1/2 bottles (
Faber 95's) of oxygen to complete. I have a grand total of six bottles
to refill from a 14 hour dive. The lower bottles I used to take breaks
on as I moved up. The rebreather portion of the dive was 8 hours, and
could have gone two more, but it is more comfortable to get out of the
gear and go to a sidemount rig at that point so we can sit in the
troughs and eat, etc.
Due to the extreme conditioning we do for these dives, we do not get
cold or tired, and decompressing is a lot easier. We also use no air in
the dive, so there is never the physical beating of that to contend
with, and the deco is a lot smoother and faster using helium-based mixes
up to 120 feet. The scooters used tested out ( in my case) to have 75
minutes of full-power run time left on the Magnum after running 100
minutes, the delivery scooter with our new motors had another two hours
left on it, and my nicad scooter, capable of running the entire
distance, was unburned ( we use three scooters each and keep safety
scooters at strategic points in the cave. We also had 31 safety bottles
in the cave. We took four out from 9,000 and 8,000, and they worked
perfectly after six months underwater). We used one nicad light and two
giant lead acid lights for the long burn time there.
We started the dive at 8:00 am Saturday, and got out at 10:00 pm. To
conduct this dive, other thatn the massive amount of support it takes to
do this ( see Dawn Kernagis' report - she is the dive manager), our
plan, devised and implemented by Jess Armentrout and Ken Sallot, was to
have a team of Head, Tomsits, Werner and Straatsma deliver the drive
bottles to 3500 feet while placing the safety scooters at 2200 and 3500,
and then have Rat, Trout, and Derek Hagler do a double stage scuba dive
over top of that to one mile, where they moved the drive bottles forward
and delivered the magnum scooters. We then dove the next day, and pulled
everything we used or picked up ( the old safeties) back to one mile,
where a team of Rat, Trout, and John Rose repeated the one mile dive and
pulled it and the old safeties out. The pull team left four hours after
we started, and passed us at 180 feet.
Having achieved a very comfortable level of efficiency with the long
range dives, we are now ready for the next phase, which will be detail
mapping of the far reaches, sampling, and continued exploration towards
the now looming interface with Leon Sinks. Since we can now get these
distances with massive reserve, and have developed such a strong team of
long-range divers, we will be able to easily move forward from here.
We are planing to begin working Big Dismal Sink again , with an eye
towards staging a "swimthrough" to get some media attention to the fact
that surface water from Leon County is showing up in Wakulla County.
Great effort this weekend by everyone.
--
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