﻿Coming up, Jonathan and Todd explore a mysterious cave hidden within a big pond in Florida!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
Merritts Mill Pond in Marianna, Florida is filled with crystal clear water that originates at
Jackson Blue Spring. But this diver’s paradise actually has 7 diveable caves within its waters.
Located about an hour west of Tallahassee,
Merritts Mill Pond is actually a long skinny section of dammed up river.
We start our day getting our tanks filled at Cave Adventurers, Edd Sorenson’s awesome dive shop
right on the pond. Then we load our pontoon boat and head out to find Hole In the Wall Cave.
We know basically where it is, and unlike Gator Hole, Hole In the Wall Cave is pretty
popular. It has a dock nearby that we can use to find it. To a non-cave diver,
a dock in the middle of nowhere probably makes no sense. But it’s right next to the cave.
It’s important to point out that we’ve never been here before and we’re not here with Edd or
someone that knows the site, so uh we’re assuming that that is the cave right next to this thing we
can tie up to. With our boat tied up, Todd and I start putting our gear together.
Soon we begin the dive.
Normally Todd and I dive with a third diver who handles the lines, so we can focus on filming.
But today it’s just the two of us. So I’m holding Todd’s camera as he runs the reel.
The beginning of the cave has an incredible chimney that drops
straight down to more than 50 feet from just behind the stop sign.
Down at the bottom of the chimney, Todd ties our reel into the main line.
Once that is done he can take his camera, and off we go.
The cave is quite murky today, so it’s hard to illustrate just how
large some of the rooms are. They go on beyond visibility.
Much of the floor of this cave consists of extremely fine silt, so we have to be very
careful to stay up away from the bottom. This makes filming a cave crawfish really hard.
I have to basically float upside-down with my feet
way up high to film this little guy without kicking up a storm.
Every time we leave a large room and the passage gets smaller,
it opens back up again into another huge room. This cave is enormous!
We swim past shelf-like rock formations that were clearly formed when the water was lower.
This cave’s passages go on for thousands of feet, but it’s pretty deep, so we don’t go
too far before it’s time to turn around. As get back near the entrance, we start to see signs of
the world above--sticks and organic material that have worked their way into the cave.
We pass through a medium-sized restriction and then
back into the chamber at the base of the chimney.
Now I’m carrying two cameras again while Todd is reeling our line in.
We soon emerge back into the cavern zone and see the light day.
Out in the pond, a fishy welcoming committee greets us.
Wow! What a good cave! That is huge! We saw the entrance and I’m like “oh this is gonna be
small and really gnarly tight cave.” And once you get through that beginning it just goes boom
like whoa! It’s just room after room after room of huge cave.
Huge open cave! Hole In the Wall Cave is a famous and popular dive in Merritts Mill Pond.
For our first dive there, the visibility was not great so we didn’t go too far. But this means that
we’re ready for a much further exploration on our next trip to this part of the Blue World.
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