New Wakulla Cave Found

May 2007-DS

Divers have discovered almost two miles of vast new watery cave passages extending northwest from Wakulla Springs close to caves extending from Leon Sinks in southern Leon County.

The narrow cave system grew as large as 50 feet across when the divers had to turn back because of lack of air, said Casey McKinlay, one of the divers.

The discovery, announced today, almost completes a quest begun in 1990 to find a link between Leon Sinks and Wakulla Springs State Park, McKinlay said. The cave systems now could be separated by as little as 1,000 feet or perhaps as much as a mile.

"Probably in the 17-year history of exploring Wakulla Springs, this is the big one," said McKinlay, project director for the Woodville Karst Plain Project.

McKinlay announced the discovery at a meeting of the Wakulla Springs Basin Working Group. Springs supporters said the discovery was an important step in understanding and protecting the water flowing to Wakulla Springs.

Casey and Jarod have made several major "pushes" in the Wakulla basin in the last year. This particular tunnel that they explored is one of many (20+ and counting) that have been explored in an effort to show the interlinking nature of this massive aquafer. They have proved this with water tracing and now are trying to document the exact path of this system and it's various tributaries. One note, the normal depth of the dive is averaging 290 feet (90 meters) with an average dive time of 23 to 26 hours. They are NOT using air as a gas but rather rebreathers with a trimix gas. They are each using 6 to 8 scooters. The support dive team numbers almost 75 divers performing different functions for this exploration. No small endeavor. More information can be found at www.gue.com under the expaditions banner.

One of those support divers is a regular on rec.scuba. We had a long chat last week when I was down in Florida. We mainly discussed the linking of the two systems and he figures it will be found in the next couple of weeks.

Last weekend another expedition was undertaken in North Florida. here is the link to some local media reports. http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/8173112.html


They were not able to link the two major cave systems, but more "line was laid" and more secrets discovered. The visual link has yet to be achieved, but by using trace methods, have proved a link does exist.


These guys are are doing much to preserve the water quality here in Florida. They are also invlolved in like efforts around the world.