Taking a multi-day trip to the Springs

[MrChen]

Ah, that was fun to see! You really did take your time looking around - next time focus more on the walls and ceilings when looking for fossils (I tried to keep my eyes peeled during the video, but didn't notice any either!)

I cut out about an hour of the video because it was just nothing going on, poor angles, or me looking around and it was too dark in the video. We should have reversed direction each time we completed a full circle around. I was looking up, down, and sideways but not in the right spots. I also didn't know what I was looking for, so if I did see one, I wasn't prepared to recognize it. A pic is posted earlier in this thread, but that was after the dive . I think I see some in the Ginnie Ballroom video just after we enter. I'm posting that next.

 

[MrChen]

I stitched together two sets of videos for this one. My cousin had my old GoPro 3 on a selfie stick and I had the 12 on my mask. We were much more comfortable with our buoyancy, an adjustment we made by dropping 4lbs each after the Devil's Den dive. We saw some cool shrimp and what looked like silver dollar sized flounders. We spent some time feeling the current at the back. Can anyone explain what the stainless steel thing is on the grate?

 

[Rilelen]

I'm not sure what that is on the grate - if someone would chime in, I've always wondered! There's a nice little article on the grate's installation in Underwater Speleology (with photos - starts on page 10).

The little flounders are called "hogchokers" - they're my fav springs fish! Many are babies/juveniles - the adults spawn in the ocean, but babies travel up into the springs to grow up (before returning to the sea to spawn; like salmon-in-reverse). For whatever reason, they're all over the spring runs at Ginnie. By comparison, I help with monthly fish counts on the Itchetucknee (which also flows into the Sante Fe) and rarely see them there.

 

[MrChen]

Here's a 3rd video. After diving the Ginnie Ballroom, we still had plenty of air in our tanks, so we drove down the road and hopped in to finish off our tanks checking out Little Devil, Devil's Eye, and Devil's Ear. We aren't cave divers, so we were just checking them out from the outside. My GoPro battery died, so we only had the old GoPro 3 on a selfie stick to record our adventure.