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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