Coming up next on Jonathan Bird's Blue World, an expedition to one of the world's most fascinating
caves!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
Most people, when they think about the Bahamas, imagine sandy beaches, blue water, and colorful
coral reefs.
What they generally don’t think about is this: limestone.
The Bahamas are islands built on a base of limestone—the skeletons of ancient coral
reefs accumulated over millions of years.
Bahamas limestone often looks like Swiss Cheese, because over thousands of years, slightly
acidic rainwater has dissolved holes in it.
Sometimes those holes get quite large and fill with water.
Hence, they become what are known in the Bahamas as Blue Holes.
Many of these Blue Holes have amazing cave systems within them.
The Blue World team has traveled to the island of Andros in the Bahamas, to explore one of
the most famous Blue Holes in the world: Stargate.
Our home away from home?
Small Hope Bay Lodge on North Andros.
They have a beautiful beach--an idyllic tropical location for rest and relaxation.
Hey, I’ll admit it, I don’t mind Blue World assignments in the Bahamas!
I might even just take a little nap in a hammock outside the dive shop!
But not for long, because I have a meeting with Jeff Birch, the owner of Small Hope Bay
Lodge, who is taking us diving!
So Jeff tell me where we are going for this dive?
Well we gotta get down here to South Andros, to Congo Town, because Stargate is just south
of that.
And of course, these bights go all the way through the island.
So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna leave Small Hope which is right here, and
we’re gonna drive to the airport.
We’re gonna jump in the plane, all of us and then we’re gonna fly on down here…all
the way down…crossing the bights.
You’re gonna see some Blue Holes along the way, straight to Congo Town.
How long of a flight is that?
Oh about 25 minutes.
And then after we arrive here, we’ll offload and catch a ride to Stargate.
Sounds great, I can’t wait.
Oh man, it’s gonna be great, absolute adventure!
It’s gonna be great!
So, early the next morning, as the sun rises, Cameraman Tim, Todd and I get our gear ready
for an early departure.
We have a long day ahead, and it starts with a ride to the airport in the back of a pickup
truck loaded with gear!
At the airport, we come to the conclusion that we have way too much gear to cram it
all into a Cessna 172 along with ourselves, so Jeff decides to make two trips down south.
We load all our scuba gear into the plane along with Cameraman Tim for the first trip.
Good to know ya!
Well, thanks for dropping us at the airport and leaving us here!
Hopefully, Jeff will be back for me and Todd--and the camera gear--in an hour or so.
Jeff is man of many talents.
Not only is he the owner of Small Hope Bay Lodge and a dive instructor, but he is also
a pilot with over 40 years experience flying around the Bahamas.
When you run a hotel in a remote place like Andros, an airplane is practically a necessity.
For Jeff, his airplane is like a car to many people.
He and cameraman Tim are off on the first leg of our adventure, delivering the scuba
gear to South Andros, which is only accessible by plane or boat.
But it’s too far by boat for a single day.
In spite of a strong breeze, flying is the only practical way to reach Stargate.
The 25 minute flight takes Jeff and Tim over the beautiful and remote landscape and coastal
ocean of Andros Island.
Soon, they land on South Andros.
At the Congo Town airport, they unload the scuba gear from the airplane.
That’s a lot of gear for a small plane!
But Jeff does this kind of thing all the time—it’s part of being a bush pilot!
Soon, he’s back in air, on his way back north to pick up me and Todd.
We’re just sitting around at the North Andros airport, watching the clouds roll in and wondering
what the weather will bring.
It’s looking a little ominous.
Jeff lands under a graying sky and the first droplets of impending rain.
We load the rest of the gear, and we’re off.
(music up)
Looking out the window, I can see The Guardian Blue Hole, where we dove last time we visited
Andros.
But then, things get a little exciting.
We head directly into a huge rainstorm.
Rain is pelting the airplane.
We can’t see anything out the windshield.
I’ve seen better visibility underwater!
Fortunately, its not long before we land safely in South Andros to meet up with Cameraman
Tim.
Man, that was a wild ride!
With all of our team and gear finally in South Andros, we can load it all into a van and
head out to Stargate.
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but Stargate turns out to be practically in
the middle of a neighborhood near Congo Town!
It even has a sign.
We park the van the van as close as we can and Jeff points out an interesting formation.
That’s it—the Stargate fault line, right there.
Jeff is pointing out a crack in the limestone, sometimes called a fault or a fracture.
It’s actually part of a series of fractures stretching more than ten miles, formed during
the last ice age when sea levels were lower and stresses within the rock caused some of
it to break.
Deep underground, this fracture is filled with water.
And we’re about to dive inside it!
Look, I’m spanning the fault!
It’s very impressive.
Well, you’re not impressed now but you wait, you will be impressed when we’re diving
under it!
But before we can dive, we still have another task ahead of us: hauling all the gear to
the Stargate entrance.
And you know what that means!
Huffing it on foot through the forest.
It’s not a long walk and there’s a clear trail.
But you can really appreciate how heavy scuba gear is when you have to hike it through the
woods!
Hiding in the forest, the entrance to Stargate offers up a little surprise.
The water is more than 20 feet down inside the hole!
Jeff gives us a dive briefing and goes over how we will conduct the dive.
We’re gonna go down, and then it’s fresh water here, and you have the mixing zone…
Having limited access to the water, we have to lower our gear down on ropes.
It’s not the gear I’m worried about, it’s me!
Once the gear is down, we start suiting up for the dive.
It has been a lot of work to get this far, and I can’t wait to see what Stargate has
to show us!
So, you are going to demonstrate the proper technique to throw yourself off this cliff
and survive.
Survive the near death-defying height.
I will try!
Did he survive?
Yeah!
He’s alive!
After Jeff shows us how it’s done, Todd goes next.
Woo hoo!
Nicely done!
OK, here comes the camera!
Lowering my expensive underwater camera and lighting system down into the water with a
rope makes me a little nervous.
After Todd grabs my camera for me, it’s my turn to jump in.
I’m a little excited and a little nervous, but there’s no turning back now.
It’s actually pretty fun, but I’m not sure how we get back out!
Cameraman Tim joins us and we start heading down through the greenish water.
Jeff leads us down into the weird, swirly halocline, a layer where the fresh water at
the surface mixes with the salt water below.
Jeff points out ancient coral, clearly identifiable.
This is the stuff that makes up most of the limestone of the island.
As I examine the limestone carefully, I can clearly see Star coral….and Brain coral.
The overhanging walls of the cavern are covered in flowstone and stalactites.
Todd backlights a stalactite to show its shape.
Flowstone is a type of formation formed by flowing water in a dry cave, leaving behind
delicate limestone formations that look like molten wax on the side of a candle.
This formation took thousands of years to form.
We follow Jeff into a crack in the wall at about 80 feet.
As we go deeper, the water gets clearer and clearer.
There is a safety line for us to follow if we need it.
It points the way out if we get lost or lose our lights.
Todd is swimming ahead of me, lighting up the cave with powerful LED lights.
Looking down, I can see the bottom of the cave at 100 feet but as we progress down this
narrow passageway, the bottom is dropping out of sight.
It drops to 200 feet, way too deep for us today.
We stay near the top of the passageway to keep as shallow as possible.
The walls of the cave are decorated in all directions with beautiful and delicate flowstone.
The whole place looks like an ornately decorated wedding cake covered in frosting!
It’s hard to believe that during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower,
this massive chasm was dry and filled with air.
Dripping water from rain up above made all these fantastic decorations.
Todd stops to point out a huge flowstone formation.
I’ve never seen anything like it!
Everywhere I look, my jaw drops and I am actually having a hard time knowing where to point
my camera.
Next we swim into a huge space where the walls bow outward.
The water is so clear that the divers look astronauts hovering in space.
Only their bubbles betray the presence of water.
Remember that crack in the ground up above?
Well right now our dive team is about 120 feet directly underneath it.
That tiny little fault line I stood across opens up into this massive submerged chasm!
Soon we approach the end of the tunnel.
We reach a place where rocks have fallen in and blocked the passageway.
This is where we turn around and head back.
As we head back, the water is filled with sinking particles dislodged from the ceiling
by our rising bubbles on the way in.
This is an excellent time to concentrate on filming close-ups of the delicate formations
on the wall, such as these exquisite stalactites that look like icicles of stone.
Jeff points out an incredible flowstone formation that Todd helps me film using his lights.
This formation is so thin, that light passes through it like a lampshade.
Have you ever seen a rock so thin that light passes through it?
Well now you have!
Because it’s thin, it’s very fragile.
Todd is careful not to actually touch it.
That is cool!
Soon we reach the entrance, and make our way out of the fault and back into the cavern,
where the water is green.
We ascend slowly back up through the swirly halocline.
We stop at 20 feet where we must undergo 15 minutes of decompression before we can surface.
Daylight is tantalizingly close.
At last, we surface, thrilled with an amazing dive.
And now, all our gear has to be hauled up on the rope.
Getting ourselves out of the water is another trick altogether.
That was one of the most amazing dives of my entire life.
But unfortunately now I have to climb this to get out of the water.
A wooden pallet and a thin rope holding it in place comprise my ladder to freedom.
I just hope this rickety contraption doesn’t break!
All right, here we go.
This isn’t too bad.
I’ll just climb out.
That has got to be the most work I have ever done for a dive.
But it was so worth it.
It was totally worth it.
So, the Blue World team spent the whole day hauling gear by airplane, truck and foot to
reach this remote hole in the ground.
It doesn’t seem all that special from the surface, but the dive showed me an incredible
world of delicate flowstone formations inside a massive chasm filled with crystal clear
water.
Quite simply: magnificent!
Every time I think I have seen it all, I see something new like this and realize there
is a lot more to discover in the Blue World.