Coming up, the Blue World team goes into one cave…and comes out another!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
It’s a cool morning in north Florida, with steam rising off the warm Suwannee River.
This section of Florida is known as Cave Country, because it’s made of porous karst limestone,
and full of caves.
There are hundreds of caves here.
Zach, Todd and I are heading out for a day of cave diving adventure!
We are meeting up with our good friend Wayne Kinard who is taking us on one of his favorite
dives today, so we head over to his dive shop, Amigos Dive Center in Fort White.
Hey Wayne!
Good morning Jonathan!
How are ya?
Doing well!
You ready to go dive Peacock?
Yeah man!
It’s going to be the best day ever!
Let’s go!
Alright!
First we rig and fill our scuba tanks.
And put all of our stuff in poor Wayne’s truck.
Next it’s off to Peacock Springs.
We might be able to do a dive in the access road!
It kind of looks like a swamp at first.
Even from the air it doesn’t look that inviting.
But this is a really popular cave dive with easy access provided by a beautiful set of
stairs.
So Wayne, tell me what we are going to do here today?
Well, we’re at Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park, and we’re at a place called
Peacock 1.
We will make our entrance here, right in the Peacock 1, and we will swim through these
tunnels, passing a place called pothole where there’s some deer bones and other animal
bones, until we reach Olsen Sink.
We will then surface at Olsen and compare our thirds and how the dive is going and then
turn around and come back in the same route that we took back to the exit of Peacock 1
where we originated our dive.
So what we are doing today is called a traverse, where we go in one cave entrance and pop out
another.
But the second entrance is close enough that we can make it on 1/3 of our air supply, so
we can turn and go back again, on the same scuba tanks.
We start by carrying our gear from the parking lot down to the cave entrance.
I can’t wait to get in the water!
This is going to be great!
Well, the good news is, at least there’s a set of steps.
That makes it a lot easier.
Next it’s time to suit up.
Wayne huffs his big backmount doubles down to the water, but Todd, Zach and I are using
sidemount, so we will don our tanks in the water.
You ready?
Alright!
The water in the spring is pretty green and a bit murky, but as we drop into the cave,
it’s much clearer.
Like most caves that see a lot of divers, there is a stop sign at the edge of the cavern
zone, warning people to go no further without cave training and equipment.
We get our cameras white balanced and follow Wayne into the darkness.
Almost immediately, Wayne finds a blind cave crayfish!
Over thousands of years living in caves, these little crustaceans have lost their pigment
and eyesight.
This species grows to about 2 inches and is only found in Florida and Georgia.
Even though it can’t see me filming, it can sense my presence and moves away as I
get close.
As we progress further into the cave, I feel like I’m swimming through an enormous piece
of Swiss cheese.
Over thousands of years, water flowing through these passages has slowly dissolved the limestone,
making the passages larger and larger.
We are careful not to kick up the silt on the bottom of the cave, which would ruin our
visibility.
Wayne leads us to a little shelf that the local divers call “the pothole.”
This is where people have placed bones that have been found in the cave for easy inspection.
Wayne holds them up but he can’t tell me what they are, so I’ll have to wait and
ask him after the dive.
This one looks like a turtle shell.
And this one looks like a cow skull.
He carefully puts the bones back where they were for other divers to see, and then we
continue on our way.
Soon we reach the 600-foot arrow.
Line arrows always point the fastest way out of the cave, so this one is telling us that
the entrance is 600 feet back the way we came.
The cave passages are getting larger in this section.
And it doesn’t take us long to reach a double line arrow.
We are now exactly halfway between Peacock 1 and Olsen sink.
Both line arrows point the way out.
700 feet either way.
So we keep following the line, towards Olsen sink, through some pretty cool passages.
We enter a low section of cave perfect for sidemount, but Wayne manages to fit with his
back-mounted tanks.
Soon we can see some light at the end of the tunnel ahead.
Wayne goes first, up through a small opening towards the surface.
One by one, we all emerge into Olsen sink, a tiny blue pool in the middle of the forest.
Woo!
Oh man, that was great!
Yes, super great!
That’s a long swim!
It is.
A lot of interesting creatures down there.
Well, I guess we should head back, we’ve got a long swim.
It’s been a great day, lets head back.
Wayne leads the way back into the cave.
We kicked up a bit of silt squeezing through that small restriction, so we have some murky
water to get through.
But soon we pass back into the nice clear water in the cave, and begin our long swim
back to the Peacock 1 entrance.
On the way out, we have the current at our backs, so the swim is easier.
We make good time.
When we enter the low section again, I notice pockets of our air have collected on the ceiling,
looking like liquid metal.
The limestone walls are an ancient seabed, so they are full of fossils and shells.
Finally we make it back to the stop sign in the cavern zone and we ascend back to the
light of day.
Woo!
That was great!
That was really amazing!
How long do you think it would take to explore all of the caves here at Peacock?
Many weeks.
Lots of hours.
This is an amazing place and I think the terminology is…it’s like Swiss cheese.
And It’s even the right color!
Pretty much.
Fun stuff!
Fantastic.
Well thank you so much, that was great.
Now it’s my least favorite part of diving…slogging all my gear out of the water and back to the
van.
My trip to Peacock Springs was a great success, because not only did I get to go cave diving,
but I also did my first traverse, swimming all the way to Olsen sink.
It’s only 1400 feet (just less than 5 football fields) away, but in a cave, that’s a pretty
long swim.
Fortunately, there was a lot of cool stuff to see along the way.
Cave diving is one of my favorite ways to explore the Blue World!
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