Cave crusader to fight on

Krem Umkseh cave in Jaintia Hills

Meghalaya’s save cave campaign crusader plans to continue his fight even though the Supreme Court recently dismissing his PIL seeking protection of the caves in the state.

Brian Kharpran, the general secretary of Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association, filed the PIL in 2006 seeking protection of caves, which are damaged by rampant limestone mining, especially in Jaintia Hills.

Kharpran said today the Supreme Court dismissed the petition in the first week of September, as his lawyer was not present during the hearing. “I do not know what went wrong and the Supreme Court dismissed the petition as our lawyer was not present during the hearing,” he said.

According to Kharpran, the court appears to be satisfied with the submission of Meghalaya government that it is a preparing a mining policy to address the concerns related to the damage to the caves.

Last year, the Supreme Court asked the state government to form a committee to initiate measures for protecting the caves. “However, we filed an affidavit before the court that we cannot accept the committee since the members of the Single Window Agency, which gives permits to the cement companies to set up units, are also part of the committee,” he said.

Moreover, there are no experts who know about the caves in the committee formed by the government, he said.

Kharpran said he would not rest until justice is delivered. “I will continue to fight for the cause of protection of the caves,” he added.

Krubera Voronya cave: dive through Kvitochka

Documentary footage of 3 Lithuanian speleologists (Saulė Pankienė, Gintautas Švedas, Aidas Gudaitis) and 1 cave diver (Vytis Vilkas) diving through "Kvitochka" siphon and getting to siphon "Dva Kapitana" in Krubera Voronya cave, 2010 August.

Dive through siphon takes about 4 minutes, but it's cropped as it's not very informative due to poor visibility.

European cave diving team sets world record

A British-led cave diving team just broke a record by completing a 5.5 miles (8.85 kilometers) dive in the Pozo Azul cave system near Covenera in northern Spain. Explorers Rick Stanton, Jason Mallinson and John Volanthen and Dutch cave diver Rene Houben completed a 50-hour journey to explore the system. The team did camp for two nights in a small dry cave area behind sump two and explored several new tunnels.

They were able to better a record set by an American team that ventured 25,591 feet (7,800 meters) into a cave system in Florida. The British team did not only have to deal with the psychological effects of being 28,953 feet (8,825 meters) from the nearest exit, but also with water temperatures of 52 degrees (11 degrees Centigrade).
Rick Stanton was one of the lead explorers of Wookey Hole Caves, a show cave and tourist attraction in the village of Wookey Hole. Over the years, he and other British cave divers did set depth record after depth record in the system near Wells in Somerset, England. In 1977, Martyn Farr reached 148 feet (45 meters), followed by Rob Parker in 1985 (223 feet/68 meters), and John Volanthen and Rick Stanton. The later team did reach 249 feet (76 meters) in 2004, and 295 feet (90 meters) in 2005.

Jason Mallinson is also a very experienced British diver. In 2008, Mallinson and Phil Rowsell explored BU56, a deep cave system in the Spanish Pyrenees that was discovered was once regarded as the deepest cave on the planet.

Rene Houben is an IT specialist from Groningen in the Netherlands. He did explore the Doux de Coly Cave in the Dordogne region of southern France in June 2010. He did also set a previous record exploring Pozo Azul when he and John Volanthen reached 14,419 feet (4,395 meters) in the cave.

An excellent YouTube video shows a different team exploring the Pozo Azul cave system in 2008 is available here:

Adapting to Darkness: How Behavioral and Genetic Changes Helped Cavefish Survive Extreme Environment

Except for the loss of eyes and pigment seen in the cave-dwelling form,
the surface-dwelling (at top) and cave-dwelling fish (at bottom)
are hard to tell apart. You can study evolution very nicely if you
have both the ancestral and derived forms of evolving animals.
Credit: University of Maryland, Masato Yoshizawa

University of Maryland biologists have identified how changes in both behavior and genetics led to the evolution of the Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) from its sighted, surface-dwelling ancestor. In research published in the August 12, 2010 online edition of the journal Current Biology, Professor William Jeffery, together with postdoctoral associates Masato Yoshizawa, and Špela Gorički, and Assistant Professor Daphne Soares in the Department of Biology, provide new information that shows how behavioral and genetic traits coevolved to compensate for the loss of vision in cavefish and to help them find food in darkness.

This is the first time that a clear link has been identified between behavior, genetics, and evolution in Mexican blind cavefish, which are considered an excellent model for studying evolution.