I am getting asked what is going on at WKPP since we have not been writing
up any dive reports. Our diving in the caves of the Woodville Karst Plain
was cut short last year by hurricanes after we got a few dives done which
culminated with a 19,000 foot penetration at Wakulla Springs. On that dive,
JJ and I set ourselves up for another dive to a lead we found at 17,000
feet which we believe has a good chance of hooking into the Leon Sinks Cave
System. Currently, the bottom of the Leon main conduit tunnel is level with
the beginning of the Wakulla Cave and is heading towards the outbound main
tunnel, while that tunnel named O Tunnel in Wakulla is angling
towards Leon. The two are about a mile apart laterally and 3-4 miles from
each other's ends, depending on how the caves run. Our drive bottles and
safeties are still in there, but it will require taking newer bottles with
us and checking all the existing ones out 17,000 feet to be prepared to add
line in the new tunnel.

This could conceivably be done in one day given our strong team, but we
will likely break it up into dives that set us up while exploring side
tunnels along the way, and will coincide with diving Leon both from the
bottom of the system and from the mid sections of the system which have
gone largely unexplored. The cave splits in several places and needs a lot
more looking. We have a large team and can get a lot of these dives done
simultaneously in the brief window of decent weather that normally can be
expected in that part of the country, which could be further shortened by
El Nino and any hurricanes that form in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since the last really long dive, Jarrod and myself, and  more recently
several other team divers, have been working with the newer Halcyon
rebreather, the RB 80. Gaining confidence and proficiency with this system,
as well as beefing up our long range scooter fleet , and testing all of
this out on a regular basis while doing lesser dives has been our priority.
We can shave considerable time off of what was a seven hour roundtrip to
the end of the line, and can basically get quite a bit further now in the
same amount of time. This is more of a stamina thing than a deco thing, as
we are already at effective saturation and have developed tables that speed
this process down to amazingly short times. Our lights burn anywhere from
13-20 hours, depending on whether we run the nicad packs or the nickel
metal, and the rest of our gear and techniques are such that cold and other
problems are not an issue.

We have all been diving regularly. In fact there was one stretch
last month where I did 17 dives, and we are all constantly cross training
and perfecting the gear. Our team is currently operating in smaller groups
at several exploration sights, both in and out of the Woodville Karst
Plain. At this time, we choose to keep the particulars quiet, as we seem to
have a vocal and persistent opposition to everything we do, which expresses
itself in attacks on GUE , DIR and WKPP, complaints about us to anyone who
will listen, and we do not want to jeopardize our access by drawing any
more attention than we have to to the Project. At some point, we will
release reports on a delayed basis to avoid this, as the nonsense will
then be moot and appear as foolish as it genuinely is by those who
perpetrate it.

I'd love to share what I have been doing, as it is some of the most severe
dives that we have ever done, and has resulted in Casey, JJ and I
putting our heads together and coming up with even higher levels of
attention to detail and procedure that could benefit all divers, but these
stories will be released on a lag in their entirety. I can say that our
methods work in places that nobody else could even guess at how to handle,
and I will say that we are also conducting scientific experiments that will
lead to a vastly greater understanding of cave dynamics, and be some of the
most useful information ever developed in this region.

All of our teams are sharpening up and getting ready to go, so we should
have a good season when we combine forces for further extending the
exploration of the conduit systems under the WKP.

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