Florida Cave Dive Observation '09

[Deep Thought]

Last week Dec. 28 - Jan 4 I was cave diving in High Springs area and had some excellent dives at Peacock, Little River and an ok dive at Manatee.  The water clarity was very good at Peacock, and Little River had a lower flow so it was easily swimable and vis was pretty good most of the dives. Manatee is a higher flow cave, very dark cave walls and not very interesting features until you get past the sink, which we did not drop in at....but its an ok dive...

What surprised me was the number of fully closed circuit rebreathers at the dive sites.  When I initially trained in cave it was on O.C., then I switched to CCR Cave in 2001, and it was very rare for me to see a rebreather in N. Florida cave sites.  This trip I would say there was about 4 out of 10 cave divers using rebreathers.  The most common rebreather was the Megalodon, then the rEvo, a couple Inspirations from our group, and saw one very modified KISS (Brett Hemple at Manatee) and an RB80.

The group I was diving with had two open circuit divers that did every dive we did without issue, so rebreathers are not necessary for the dives we were doing but an alternative.  The only dives I saw that would necessitate CCR's was the cave mapping that Brett and buddy were setting up at Manatee. 

Side note on staying at Richard's Hydro Lodge - Very Nice!

Good Diving

Deep Thought