Coming up on Jonathan Bird’s Blue World, a claustrophobic Florida cave dive!
Hi, I’m Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
Florida has a well-deserved reputation for sun, sand and ocean.
But North Florida is known in the scuba diving community as a top cave diving destination—cave
country.
Most North Americans learn to cave dive here in Florida cave country then once they’re
certified, they go out around the world having more cave diving adventures to places like
the Bahamas and the Yucatan.
But I did it backwards.
I learned to cave dive in in the Bahamas, and I’ve never even seen a Florida cave.
Today, I’m going to have my first Florida cave dive!
This is Jug Hole, at Ichetucknee Springs State Park.
Above water it just looks like a little pond.
But underwater, nestled within a ring of eel grass, there is a hole going straight down
into the Earth.
In this part of Florida the soil is thin over a base of limestone created by ancient coral
reefs.
But over millions of years, rain water has eaten away at the limestone, creating a kind
of Swiss cheese called karst.
It’s full of caves, which are full of water.
In places, the water flows out of the ground in springs that form surface rivers and streams.
That’s exactly what Jug Hole is—a spring.
I begin my day at Amigos Dive Center in Fort White with owner Wayne Kinard, my guide to
diving North Florida.
Wayne’s shop is smack dab in the middle of Florida Cave country!
We load tanks and gear and hit the road for a short drive to an amazing place.
Soon we arrive at Icketucknee Springs State Park, which has no less than 7 springs that
together feed the Icketucknee River.
After a short walk, lugging gear in a cart, we reach Blue Hole Spring, known to the locals
as Jug Hole, one of largest of the springs.
It flows at between 40 and 60 million gallons a day, which is enough to fill 2 swimming
pools every minute!
We suit up with sidemount cave diving gear and prepare to explore Jug Hole.
And as soon as we are ready, Todd’s camera malfunctions.
After I sealed it, everything was working then.
Underwater cameras are notoriously finicky, and they always pick inconvenient moments
to act up.
With the camera sorted out, we head underwater, with Wayne leading the way.
Water is gushing out of the spring.
It blows us back with such force that we need to fight to get down into the entrance to
the cave.
Once through the narrow opening, we enter a large cavern zone that opens up like a jug
inside, which is where the spring gets its name.
At the bottom of the jug, the cave leads down at an angle.
Wayne ties a guideline and leads the way.
I follow behind with my big camera, fighting just to make forward progress against the
strong current.
Most well-visited caves like this one have a warning sign to remind divers who aren’t
cave trained to stay out.
I push past the warning sign, leaving the cavern zone where you can still see light
from the opening.
Soon we arrive at a wide but very low section of cave.
It barely looks like anyone can fit in there, but Wayne squeezes right in.
As I push in behind him, I realize that my camera is almost too large to fit.
This wide, but low section of cave is called the bedding plane.
There was a layer of softer rock in this space, but it was dissolved away by the water, leaving
the harder rock on the ceiling and floor.
The current through here is very strong.
Cameraman Todd and I have to claw our way forward.
It’s not a place for the claustrophobic.
And it’s also not an easy place to work a camera!
On the far side of the bedding plane, we come out into a larger chamber, and since there
is more space, the current is lower.
In many caves, the sandy bottom in this chamber would be a big hazard, but in this cave, any
silt we kick up is carried away immediately.
At the far end of the big chamber, just as I am getting used to the gentle current, we
reach a tiny restriction.
This cave is famous for this restriction.
If you can’t get through, this is as far as you can go.
Wayne shows me the right body angle to get through.
And he goes first to demonstrate.
Most back-mount divers have to take their scuba tanks off to get through here.
But with sidemount, we can squeeze through.
Again, my camera is so big that I’m more concerned about banging it on the rocks than
I am about getting through the restriction.
The current through this tiny restriction is so powerful that I have to pull myself
through.
My fins are useless.
Two swimming pools a minute are flowing through this restriction.
I’m like a salmon fighting my way up the rapids.
Todd comes through too, and we continue on our way.
As we work our way deeper into the cave, we are now about 100 feet deep and 400 feet into
the cave.
The passages are getting smaller.
I find a bone on the cave floor, most likely dating back to a time during the last ice
age perhaps 15,000 years ago, when this cave was dry and animals could walk in here.
Soon we reach the end of the line—literally.
550 feet from the entrance.
This is as far as divers can fit in this cave.
We go around a corner into a section of the cave with no flow.
In here the water is stagnant—and murky.
Time to turn around and head back out.
But things are a little different on the way out.
Now we are going with the current.
You might thing that makes it easier, since we don’t have to fight the current.
But now we have two different problems.
First, the current is trying to throw us into the rocks and push us through restrictions
from behind.
Second, if we kick up silt, it travels downstream with us, instead of being whooshed away downstream
while we swim upstream.
When we get back to the restriction, Todd and Wayne head through first, then I squeeze
through with the water pushing me hard from behind.
Back at the bedding plane we stop for some pictures with underwater photographer Gene
Page.
Finally we head back out into the cavern zone to decompress.
While I’m decompressing I have time to think about this dive and compare it to other caves
I have visited.
In the Bahamas and the Yucatan, the caves tend to have a lot of fragile formations,
almost no current and salt water under the fresh water.
The caves in Florida tend to be all fresh water, often with strong water flow and very
little in the way of ornamentation.
It’s a different kind of cave diving.
You don’t have to be as concerned about breaking fragile formations but you do have
to fight the current.
No matter what kind of caves I’m diving into, cave diving is an exhilarating sport
that satisfies my urge to explore the unknown.
And with the caves of Florida so close and convenient, I’ll definitely be back to Wayne’s
shop for more cave diving soon!