SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Part 1
1-10-9
Shagman picked me up at 6AM Saturday morning, with the boat loaded and ready to go. It was warm, despite being early, with heavily overcast skies and a decent chance for showers all day long. We headed out knowing we were gonna get wet anyway.
We hit up the park and I renewed my yearly FL State Park Pass. Then off to the boat launch with waters higher than normal, to unload, setup, and head upstream. The springs we'd be diving this morning were supposed to have a pretty decent flow, so we hoped they'd stay clear despite the higher water levels.
This trip is supposedly best done with a canoe, but the water levels worked in our favor and we motored right up to the first spring entrance. We found the run without any problems. This is a group of springs with two main basins, atleast 3 entrances into the system can be found here with a few other reported vents that we didn't explore into further down the run. After gearing up we hit up the first basin(just around the corner from the head spring) and checked out the small depression and fissure crack making up its vent. Lots of bass and bream in the basin with the occassional large school of mullet. There were also a few slider turtles for Shag to chase. I tied off a primary and explored down the vent into what comprised of a very little cavern zone, found the existing cave line easily.
Once we had explored the short amount of cavern zone and had scared away any life from OW we moved on to the headspring just upstream about 100 yards. This basin was much larger with several limestone ledges and vents. I swam over one vent(more like a karst window) with line visibly crossing in two directions(upstream and downstream) and we settled on another vent which pushed out a bit more flow. I tied in and we explored the daylight area, which was a bit larger due to a fissure crack running parrallel that increased our view of OW. Towards the end of visible daylight, there was a droppoff in which drops down with line visible running across, so I dropped down and tied into, then ascended and turned the dive. Once back in OW, we headed to the first karst window and explored the small bit of lightzone available in both directions. Downstream was a bit siltier and lower, and upstream was a bit rockier and bent around left into a vertical fissure. On the otherside of the vertical fissure was my reel. It made a 40' traverse from vent to vent within the basin - LOL. Once I pulled my reel, we goofed around a bit more in OW and found two more depressions that looked like collapsed sinkholes adjascent to the main basins and sharing the same OW, but neither had vents(unless they were visible under fallen debri). I had a great little dive with a max depth of 53'(in the first basin) with a combined total dive time of 48 minutes. We talked to some locals on returning to the boat and Shagman even got one to take a picture of us with his camera. They were on a jon boat and were taking pics of us anyway.
We piled gear back into the Rubber Ducky and headed upstream a bit, then found another spring up a very short run. The very small basin was tannic, but there was a visible boil, so it may be worth checking out later. The ride back was scenic, but uneventfull. We checked out Blue Hole Spring(no diving allowed) on the way out.
Once we finished up at the park we headed south and found ourselves at another primitive boat launch thats privately owned but available to the public, as long as its kept clean(according to the signs). The water was quite shallow, but high enough for the boat(WAY higher than my previous visit to this area). We setup the boat again, putting her in the water and we hopped in without gear, just to scout some locations out.
We quickly came across a spring basin that was completely inundated, and likely contributed, with tannic water. The water was clear(very little particulate), but red.
Once out of the upstream run, we were in the main body of water, which was wide, clear-ish(milky), but very shallow. There was a ton of hydrilla but we tried to make progress upstream. We made it atleast a mile before hydrilla and silt started clogging the boats intake and we turned and made slow progress back. Just too shallow and too much vegetation. We wouldn't have gotten anywhere with gear. Unfortunately, the progress we made was only because the waterlevels were up. Under normal conditions, this would have been even more of a waste of effort. We succeeded completely in our first site, so missing out on these sites were easy to deal with and as always, we were having fun exploring.
Hit up Cave Adventurers(appropriate name for weekends like this) for some fills and talked with Brian H and Stephanie for a bit and we all met back up at Old Mexico for some excellent grub and conversation before the night was over. Had a great day and slept soundly.
Report for 1-11-9 will come tomorrow.
1-10-9
Shagman picked me up at 6AM Saturday morning, with the boat loaded and ready to go. It was warm, despite being early, with heavily overcast skies and a decent chance for showers all day long. We headed out knowing we were gonna get wet anyway.
We hit up the park and I renewed my yearly FL State Park Pass. Then off to the boat launch with waters higher than normal, to unload, setup, and head upstream. The springs we'd be diving this morning were supposed to have a pretty decent flow, so we hoped they'd stay clear despite the higher water levels.
This trip is supposedly best done with a canoe, but the water levels worked in our favor and we motored right up to the first spring entrance. We found the run without any problems. This is a group of springs with two main basins, atleast 3 entrances into the system can be found here with a few other reported vents that we didn't explore into further down the run. After gearing up we hit up the first basin(just around the corner from the head spring) and checked out the small depression and fissure crack making up its vent. Lots of bass and bream in the basin with the occassional large school of mullet. There were also a few slider turtles for Shag to chase. I tied off a primary and explored down the vent into what comprised of a very little cavern zone, found the existing cave line easily.
Once we had explored the short amount of cavern zone and had scared away any life from OW we moved on to the headspring just upstream about 100 yards. This basin was much larger with several limestone ledges and vents. I swam over one vent(more like a karst window) with line visibly crossing in two directions(upstream and downstream) and we settled on another vent which pushed out a bit more flow. I tied in and we explored the daylight area, which was a bit larger due to a fissure crack running parrallel that increased our view of OW. Towards the end of visible daylight, there was a droppoff in which drops down with line visible running across, so I dropped down and tied into, then ascended and turned the dive. Once back in OW, we headed to the first karst window and explored the small bit of lightzone available in both directions. Downstream was a bit siltier and lower, and upstream was a bit rockier and bent around left into a vertical fissure. On the otherside of the vertical fissure was my reel. It made a 40' traverse from vent to vent within the basin - LOL. Once I pulled my reel, we goofed around a bit more in OW and found two more depressions that looked like collapsed sinkholes adjascent to the main basins and sharing the same OW, but neither had vents(unless they were visible under fallen debri). I had a great little dive with a max depth of 53'(in the first basin) with a combined total dive time of 48 minutes. We talked to some locals on returning to the boat and Shagman even got one to take a picture of us with his camera. They were on a jon boat and were taking pics of us anyway.
We piled gear back into the Rubber Ducky and headed upstream a bit, then found another spring up a very short run. The very small basin was tannic, but there was a visible boil, so it may be worth checking out later. The ride back was scenic, but uneventfull. We checked out Blue Hole Spring(no diving allowed) on the way out.
Once we finished up at the park we headed south and found ourselves at another primitive boat launch thats privately owned but available to the public, as long as its kept clean(according to the signs). The water was quite shallow, but high enough for the boat(WAY higher than my previous visit to this area). We setup the boat again, putting her in the water and we hopped in without gear, just to scout some locations out.
We quickly came across a spring basin that was completely inundated, and likely contributed, with tannic water. The water was clear(very little particulate), but red.
Once out of the upstream run, we were in the main body of water, which was wide, clear-ish(milky), but very shallow. There was a ton of hydrilla but we tried to make progress upstream. We made it atleast a mile before hydrilla and silt started clogging the boats intake and we turned and made slow progress back. Just too shallow and too much vegetation. We wouldn't have gotten anywhere with gear. Unfortunately, the progress we made was only because the waterlevels were up. Under normal conditions, this would have been even more of a waste of effort. We succeeded completely in our first site, so missing out on these sites were easy to deal with and as always, we were having fun exploring.
Hit up Cave Adventurers(appropriate name for weekends like this) for some fills and talked with Brian H and Stephanie for a bit and we all met back up at Old Mexico for some excellent grub and conversation before the night was over. Had a great day and slept soundly.
Report for 1-11-9 will come tomorrow.
Today was great too, dove a set of springs that have probably seen less traffic than any other site I've ever dived. Just too tired to finish up the report and process anymore pictures.
