Coming up!
Jonathan and Todd dive a spooky cave in the middle of the ocean…filled with snow?
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
Thousands of years ago, during the last ice age, sea levels were hundreds of feet lower
than they are today.
Many cave entrances that formed back then are now hidden under the surface of the ocean.
Cameraman Todd and I have traveled to Caye Caulker just off the coast of Belize, to explore
a famous ocean cave.
We arrive at Sunrise Scuba, and immediately realize that we are going to have challenging
conditions today.
Normally we don’t worry about wind when we are cave diving, but when the entrance
to the cave is in the ocean, the surface conditions matter.
We leave the dock with Captain Max Novelo at the helm.
Before we can even think about diving, we have to find the cave entrance.
So the entrance to Winter Wonderland cave is somewhere around here.
We have the GPS numbers, and that gets us pretty close, and then we have to actually
find it.
You might be thinking…why don’t they just have a buoy on it?
And the answer is they kinda want to keep the location a little bit of a secret.
You don’t want people to come out here and see a buoy and go diving, and then find a
cave and maybe go in there without the equipment or training.
So it’s a little bit of a secret spot.
As we get close to the cave, a squall blows in and conditions are getting rough.
I’m using a GPS app on my cell phone to help find the entrance.
Unfortunately we can’t see it through the water, because the storm has churned up the
bottom and made the ocean milky.
Our divemaster, cave explorer Ilya Rosado will attempt to locate the cave by scuba.
While he looks for the cave, Todd and I start pulling our gear together.
Soon, Ilya has found the cave and marks it with a buoy.
It doesn’t seem like great conditions for a dive, but in theory it should be fine once
we get inside the cave.
I’m anxious to get going and get out of this wind.
Underwater, things don’t look good.
The visibility is about five feet.
We can barely see the entrance to the cave even when we’re right on it.
Ilya heads down first and we follow.
Things aren’t much better inside and I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this dive.
The first couple of hundred feet into the cave are terrible and frankly a little scary.
Ilya places an arrow on the line, which is overgrown with marine growth.
As the tides come and go, ocean water is pulled in and out of the cave, so bad visibility
can come with it.
But slowly as we push on, getting further and further from the ocean, things start to
clear up.
About 500 feet from the entrance, we can finally see.
And we realize why it’s called Winter Wonderland.
Particles drawn in from the ocean, settle like snow on the formations.
But the floor of this cave is pure silt, and we have to stay way up off the bottom to avoid
creating a silt-out.
As we progress further into the cave, the water continues to get clearer, but our bubbles
are knocking particles off the ceiling.
It really does look like a scene out of a Christmas movie!
Eventually we enter a section of the cave where the calcite formations are almost black,
instead of white like most caves.
Scientists think it’s caused by bacteria that cover the formations during a period
when water levels are down.
I can’t get over the fact that literally every formation in here is black—it looks
like soot covering everything.
And with the white silt, it has a Winter Wonderland feel for sure!
We reach a place where we can’t really go much further easily, so it’s time to turn
around.
Now we follow the guideline back out.
We know that we are getting closer to the entrance as the visibility goes down.
Back in the cavern zone, we pick up our oxygen stage bottles for decompression.
This dive reached 150 feet deep, so we have about 20 minutes of deco.
We start at 20 feet in the cave, then progress to ten feet just above the cave.
The visibility is so bad that we have to follow the anchor line back to the boat.
Woo, it got better in the end, once we got past all the silt!
Well, I gotta say, that was a lot of work for a cave dive, but it was FUN!
The good thing about cave diving, is that caves stay right where you left them.
However, caves in the ocean can present challenges.
Our expedition to Winter Wonderland was not without challenges, but this fascinating cave
was well worth the effort.
Without question, it was the most interesting ocean cave I have yet seen in the Blue World.
Hey everyone!
Did you know that you now can become a Blue World member?
Hit the JOIN button down below and get access to cool perks like custom badges, early access
to new videos, your name in the credits and more!