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The Wakulla 2 Expedition was graced by a visit from the first explorers in Wakulla Spring, Wally Jenkins and Garry Salsman. These two men are like heros to us on the project. They began diving in Wakulla in the 1950s while college students at FSU in Tallahassee. Decades before any formalized cave diving procedures were developed, their team invented new techniques in order to explore into the entrance tunnel of Wakulla -- what we now refer to as A-Tunnel. During the midst of our conversations, two comments they made were interesting enough that we asked their permission to use them here on the website:
Garry: "If we have a purpose it's to explore our surroundings. Wakulla just happens to be one of the greatest places in the world to do that."
Wally: "I was the greatest diver in the world at 19, then I got lost inside the cave and grew up."
Garry Salsman (left) and Wally
Jenkins (right) look on with great interest as Barbara am
Ende (center) shows them the
3D map of Wakulla Springs
generated during this expedition [photo ©1999 Jill
Heinerth].
As the Wakulla2 Project winds down, our missions are becoming easier. The support crew is running like a well-tuned engine and everything is working flawlessly. Three months ago I would never have imagined myself completing bottom times at 100 meters (300 ft) that approached 5 hours. I also never envisioned dives that blew past the three digit counter on my dive watch.
With that in mind, today's dive was a pleasure all around. Mark Meadows felt it was his best dive of the project. As we suited up in the water he kept remarking, "haven't you got anything else for me to take? Perhaps a small car or a dive store display rack?"
The last time we dove together we were not left with an open spot on the harness. Our mission today was to run through C Tunnel and "leap-frog" radio location coils. It was our first dive in C Tunnel and we were both truly inspired by its large cathedral-like rooms.
The water in the basin has become very green. Visibility was approximately 10 meters (30 ft) in the main passage. As we rounded the corner at the BC Junction it improved dramatically. The newly modified scooters gave us a considerable speed advantage. We arrived at the end of the line in no time and then doubled back to the first beacon John Zumrick and Paul Heinerth had dropped on a previous mission. We triggered the signal with a flip of a switch on the battery pack and then departed to complete some manual survey of other lines in the area. While we finished our work below ground, Brian Pease and John Zumrick were homing in on our signals above the surface. Like "well-witchers" of the next millennium, they traipsed through the Park with receivers and headphones.
We gave them twenty minutes for the first coil and then ramped up our pace. The process continued for four more locations before we prepared to exit. At the last coil location we flipped the battery pack on and off several times to let the surface crew know that we were on our way home.
On the return trip, we picked up some of our stashed safety bottles and took a short reconnaissance run up A Tunnel. We wanted to determine if the visibility was still diveable.
The remainder of the dive was uneventful, but the decompression was outstanding. Resident chefs Steve Tucker and Robin Stewart had cookies on our "doorstep" when we transferred from the Personnel Transfer Capsule to the chamber. To top it off, we had a scrumptious prime rib dinner hand-delivered by Steve at our 15 meter (50 ft) stop. I must admit, I'm really going to miss the service at the Deco Hilton!
Brian Pease has been working on
surveying to the radio locations he has found on the
surface. Here, using Trimble GPS equipment with centimeter
level accuracy, he pushed the equipment to its limits. GPS
has a difficult time getting satellite fixes in the trees.
This small clearing in the forest was just large enough to
catch 5 satellites and obtain the location to centimeter
accuracy. During the C-Tunnel dive, Brian and John Zumrick
located five radio beacons while Mark Meadows and Jill
Heinerth moved the coils inside the cave. For those stations
where we cannot get the precision GPS fix we are using a
Leica Tc-1100 total station to tie the location points to a
known GPS benchmark. [photo ©1999 Barbara Anne am
Ende].
This page was last updated on February 22, 1999 (directional buttons modified December 27, 1999).
