Black Spring
by Ron Bear

We found a new cave! (New to us) Black Spring. Weekend Report.

Hi All,
We had quite an adventure this Saturday. We were told about two springs that we hadn’t been to before. The directions were simple. Go south out of Marianna on 276. Bear left at 167. Turn left onto the spring road just passed 1656 (which is on the right). When the road ends go left to the boat ramp.

We were told that right after we went left from the boat ramp we would come to a big pond. Black Spring is at the bottom of that pond but don’t go there. The spring is called black because the water is black. People that dive that cave just feel their way around. Black Spring was not our goal. We wanted to go passed it to a second spring. A book called it Gadsden and a map called it Indian so call it what you will.

We were told to leave the motor behind because there would be no opportunity to use it. That was totally correct. The spring run was about 80 feet wide and four inches deep most of the way. The terrain was different than our normal cave diving milieu. Normally we are in a cypress swamp. Cypress trees are pretty much the dominant tree and the water has lots of cypress knees sticking up. Here the dominant foliage was live oak, pine, and yopon (sp?) holly. There were dozens of native Florida marsh birds here. I don’t know what any of them are called other than the great blue heron. They all have very long legs, long necks and long beaks. One species in particular has a beak as long as his body. The beak seemed to be about pencil sized but curved (and pink). The bird’s body was white. For such pretty birds they (collectively) have very ugly voices. GRRONNK.

At first John and I were working our butts off getting the boat upstream. We were sinking up to our knees in the mud and pushing the boat which only had about four inches of water under it. At one point we had a big wad of mud bulldozed up in front of the boat. After a while we got smarter about picking the six inch deep water instead of the four inch deep water. Things went smoother after that. It still took us a full hour to get up the spring run. After working very hard and getting hot and sweaty our reward was a sign. The sign said that the land AND water was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted. I noted that you can paint anything you want on a sign, but that doesn’t make it true. The law in Florida is that you can not restrict access to a navigable waterway no matter what land you own. We were on thin ice and we knew it. John suggested that the mere fact that we were there in a boat meant the spring run was a navigable waterway. (We made it to the boat ramp with a boat too. Does that mean that I10 is a navigable waterway?)

Ultimately we decided to pass on possibly having a confrontation with the law. On the way back downstream we managed to actually FLOAT the boat almost the entire way. Two hours after we had started we were back at the Black Spring pond. We were hot and sunburned and we were NOT going to go home without diving.

Kim wasn’t interested in going into a cave with no visibility so it was just John and I. When we got to the entrance of the cave we could see that we certainly had much better vis than zero. On the other hand this was certainly the worst vis I had ever started with on a cave dive. We headed in to the cave super cautiously. Looking back on it now, I can’t make this make sense, but I was more worried about disturbing the vis than usual. I already said I couldn’t make it make sense, but I guess I was thinking something like, “ If it is this bad with out me screwing up then what will it be like if I do screw up?”

I think there may have been a large chamber parallel to the main chamber right at the entrance. I saw a dark gaping hole off to the left. If the vis had been normal (normal in Florida caves is 100’+) I would have been able to see over there unless it went around a corner. In normal vis if it did go around a corner then I would have just swam over and taken a look. As it was I was kind of glued to the line and didn’t go over there. At a penetration of around fifty feet, we were up against the left wall. (I don’t know where the right wall was.) At the very bottom of the wall there was a half circle shaped opening about four feet in diameter with a catfish staring at me. Eight feet farther there was another hole about the same shape and size and I believe the same catfish arrived in it about the same time I got next to it. We then turned a corner to our left and a large black hole replaced the wall on our left. I never got the guts to go in there. But I think that if I had then I would have seen those hemispherical holes from the side that the catfish was on and I would have come out right at the entrance where the gaping hole had been on my left. About 100 feet farther into the cave we came upon a fork in the line. It wasn’t the typical setup where one line continues (indicating the main passage) and the other has a small gap that needs a line tied in. This fork appeared to offer two perfectly valid choices. I guess this was actually a good way to set up the line in this cave because I am not sure we would have seen a gap.

Double Decker Passage
We chose to go right. The line only went about 50 feet before terminating. We seemed to be in a really huge room. I couldn’t see the base of the walls anywhere. The ceiling seemed to go up forever as well. I did see one little spur of rock about fifteen feet above my head, but I couldn’t see the ceiling above it nor the wall that must be holding it up. Well this just didn’t make any sense. My experience is that lines are terminated when the passage either dead-ends or gets so low that it is nearly impossible to continue. This may be a dead end room I am in, but at least they could have taken the line to the edge of it. I started looking at the terminal rock very carefully. There was about a four-inch piece of string going down into the silt. I grabbed it and pulled. Sure enough, it started coming up out of the silt. The line was buried under a couple of inches of silt but it just kept pulling out easily enough. Every little bit of line I pulled up gave me just a little more slack. I noticed a rock on the floor and decided to tie off to it both to tighten up the slack and to keep the line from dropping back into the silt. The rock completely disintegrated in my hand. It looked like a rock but felt more like a glob of mud. I prodded gently at the next rock I came to and realized it had the same consistency. Once I had gathered up a six-inch loop of slack line, I draped it around one of these mud balls. The line is not great but it is better than when I found it.

This whole time I was playing with the line the floor had been sloping up hill and the walls had been closing in. We were now in a passage about eight feet wide. The walls disappeared at the topmost reach of our lights. The ceilings were up there somewhere but how far? I told John to hold and I started floating up. I didn’t mess with my wings at all, I just let the air expand and take me up. I lost the line quickly but I could still see John’s light and I knew that he was holding on the line (the whole reason why the hold signal is a command signal) and so I headed for the ceiling. The passage narrowed as it went up so by the time I got to the top it was only about two feet wide. I could barely make out a faint glow from John’s light. I checked my depth gage. I was at 35 FFW. Well the last time I had checked it was at the fork and I had been at a depth of 85 FFW. Yes John’s light was very faint, but the fact that I could see it at all meant that the vis was way better than what I had previously thought. When I got back down I signaled that John should go up and take a look. Once I was holding on the line and John was on his way up for a look, I checked my depth again. I was only at 55 FFW. This was my first really accurate vis measurement in the cave. Twenty feet was the absolute edge of visibility.

We continued to the end of this passage. It dead-ended after about 200 feet. Since John had trailed in he led out. I decided to get closer to the ceiling and come out about ten feet above John. After about forty feet I saw a rock ledge going across the passage at the level where I was. There was a big hole above it that continued at the height of the ceiling. Normally what I do when confronted with such an opportunity is to go to the edge of the hole and then go through when (or if) I see my buddies lights. In this case I realized that I would have to go higher and then wait for John to get out in front and by that time he would be out of visual range. I really wanted to go through that hole. I was just sure it would be a continuation of the same passage, but I was flummoxed by the knowledge that I wouldn’t get a glimpse of light. Just when I had decided that prudence dictated that I should go under the ledge rather than over it, a big plume of exhaust bubbles came up from the other side of the ledge. I grinned hugely and swam through the hole. Hey there’s John right where I thought he would be. Thirty feet ahead there was another hole just like that one. This time I eagerly anticipated the bubbles and sure enough they came and I went through. John returned by the floor and I returned by the ceiling. With the vis the way it was, you could have run a line up by the ceiling and called that a circuit.

John was in the lead out of that passage so when we returned to the fork he just naturally led us into the cave on the left fork. This passage was the perfect size for the vis. The ceiling was 15 to 18 feet from the floor and the passage was 20 to 25 feet wide. I would occasionally lose sight of the ceiling or one wall, but all I had to do to reacquire it was go up a little or just a few feet toward the missing wall. John and I were both measuring the vis in this passage. We each agreed that we could see 12 to 15 feet by our own light. By your buddy’s light you could see almost twenty feet. That shows that the poor vis had as much to do with backscatter as it did with water clarity. Outside John asked whether to call the vis 15 or 20. I reasoned that either answer would be correct.

About 150 feet down this passage I couldn’t find the right wall. I got as far off the line as I could while still keeping track of it (about 10 feet) but still couldn’t spot the wall. I thought about tying a line and seeing if this was actually a side passage but I also realized that the wall could have easily been just one more foot beyond where I could see. I marked the spot with a clothespin thinking I would check it out on the way back through. This single event is really not worth mentioning. The reason I decided to mention it is, it was typical of what happened all day. In large passages I would swim in a corkscrew around the line. I would swim right to verify a right wall and then swim up towards the ceiling (it frequently was NOT there) then over to the left.

This passage only went about 200 feet before it got to another fork just like the first one. John grabbed the line and held it out for me to see before we chose the left fork. I wish he hadn’t done that. The line had some kind of gunk draped over it and when he touched it he left a bunch of these big gunky clods just hovering in mid air.

Turtle Passage
This passage started at an intersection that was too wide to make out the details. As the walls started to narrow down to the point that I could see them I realized that there was another high ceiling and I went looking for another double decker passage. Once again I was way above John (15 feet felt like a bunch in this cave). This time the passage didn’t go very far with a twenty foot ceiling before it went back to having a much lower ceiling. By this time we were far enough into the cave that I was beginning to realize that the clams all over the floor were not outside clams that had spilled into the cave a little. I guess that the water is murky enough to support filter feeders all over the floor all throughout the cave. In addition to the normal eels, catfish, and white crayfish, I also saw a bluegill and a shrimp in this passage. My best guess is that they were both just plain old lost. Some 300 feet back in this passage we came across the remains of a large turtle. About fifty feet later we came across another one and then a third before the second was out of site and a fourth before the third was out of site. The fourth one was the only one that retained a bowl shape. The other three had each collapsed into piles of the various plates that make up a turtle shell. Ok turtles drown in caves. It happens all the time. They dive down and when they need to go back up for a breath they can’t find their way out so they drown. My question is why had all of these very large (12 to 15 inches) turtles all drown right in this spot. My thought is that there might be some hole to the surface that has some inflow or outflow that they could feel (but I could not) but not a big enough opening for them to actually swim through. I looked on the ceiling for such a feature but did not find it. Later outside Kim had a different explanation. The deepest part of this cave occurs within 100 feet of the entrance. From there any direction you go is shallower. The very definition of coming up for air might be “get shallower until your head breaks the surface.” It is possible that any turtle swimming beyond 100 feet of penetration would never try going deeper to exit. Rather they would keep getting shallower even though that actually led them farther into the cave. I think her explanation is probably right. This passage dead-ended right at the last dead turtle.

Since John had led us into this side passage I led us out. When we got back to the fork (second fork) the crud was still hanging in the air and I led us down the right side (farther into the cave). Some hundred feet down this passage there was a big hole on the right where I could not find the wall. This makes me suspect that had I turned right at my clothes pin instead of at the fork in the line, I may have come out in this same passage at this hole. That is complete conjecture though. It is entirely possible that I looked at two unrelated wide spots and in each case the wall was just beyond the beam of my light. Right in there somewhere I saw the first evidence of breakdown I had seen in this cave. There were two very large boulders on the floor that had obviously come out of the ceiling. I led us another 400 feet into the cave before John called the dive. Outside John told us he had called the dive on TOTAL thirds. I instantly knew what he meant, but Kim didn’t, so I will explain. When John called the dive we had gone some 2000 feet. John had enough air to go another 4000 feet or twice the entrance distance (ergo thirds). The thing is we were only at a penetration of about 900 feet (2000 includes in and out of side passages). So his thirds included the total swim rather than the actual penetration.

I had one problem on the way out and it relates directly to my inexperience with low vis cave diving so I will share. I looked ahead and then I looked down to read my SPG. I usually don’t have any problem reading my SPG while it is still attached to my hip. In the low vis I was having more trouble than normal getting just the right combination of SPG-is-lit, but not having glare on the SPG. Still not all that many seconds had gone by when THWACK. I swam full speed into a wall. The passage had been twenty feet high for as far as my light would shine (of course that is only 15 feet in this cave). Probably within 16 or 17 feet the cave ceiling had dropped to eight feet. In this cave when that happens the high passage dead ends abruptly in a wall and only the low passage continues. This was not the typical story where the diver’s head clears the low rock but the tanks don’t. In this collision my head squarely impacted the cave. At least my head took the damage and spared my manifold. [:]-) Suffice it to say that when 300 pounds of me and my gear hit the wall at full speed, an eel and two catfish learned some naughty words. The moral of the story is that if you can only SEE 15 feet do not SWIM MORE than 15 feet before looking up again.

After the dive I realized that I had reached a new strange paradigm. I can recall when I first switched to double 80s. The first time I managed to exit the cave with over 1500 PSI I had a strange thought. I had left the cave because I was out of air (had hit thirds). Yet I had an ENTIRE 80 left in my doubles. Wow! An 80 used to be all the air I could think I would ever need and here I was with a whole 80 and considering myself out-of-air! Well Saturday with my new (4th dive) 104s, I exited the cave with 2000 PSI. Are you with me on the math here? I exited the cave because John was “out of air” (thirds) (I was several hundred PSI ahead of him). But look at what was left in my double 104s.

A FULL set of double 80s.

HA!
DSAO
Ron

If you would like to contact Ron, email him at ronald.bear@eglin.af.mil