A French-Swiss team of cavers has released photographs and a film from its latest expedition to a huge network of chambers and sinkholes beneath the Nakanai Ranges of West New Britain, in Papua New Guinea.
The film has premiered at a mountaineering film festival in the French city of Grenoble, and photos from the WOWO 2012 expedition will soon be available on the web.
To find out more about this underworld Isabelle Genoux talked to French speleologist and photographer Philip Bence.
The interview can be listened to on Radio Australia.
New discovery: The giant underground chamber, named
The Frozen Deep, that has recently been found inside Cheddar
Gorge in Somerset.
A group of cave divers have uncovered a massive chamber below the Cheddar Gorge after four years of searching and hundreds of hours of digging.
The huge space, which had been named 'The Frozen Deep' by the team, is a staggering 60 metres in diameter and reaches up to 30 metres high.
It contains stunning calcite formations - including two pure white columns each standing at five-metres tall - surrounded by white flowstone on the walls and floor.
'Tuesday Diggers', a group of local cave divers, discovered the chamber after spending four hours a week for four years digging, breaking rocks and opening 50cm passages.
Hugh Cornwell, director of Cheddar Gorge and Caves, in Somerset, said: 'This is a truly significant discovery by the 'Diggers' which opens up a fascinating new chapter in the history of Mendip cave exploration.
'The question already emerging is whether they can now find a connection from The Frozen Deep to the River Cave.
An ongoing joint expedition of caving clubs from several Siberian sities to Sarma Cave in the Arabika Massif (Western Caucasus), led by Pavel Rudko, has reported that the cave has been pushed 60 m below the previous deepest point (-1760 m) reached last year.
This firmly establishes Sarma Cave as the second deepest cave in the world with depth of 1830 m, following Krubera Cave, located in the same massif, which has been explored this August to -2197 m by the Ukrainian expedition. The third place is hold by Snezhnaya Cave in the nearby Bzybsky Massif, with a depth of 1760 m.
The word Tepui means "house of the gods" in the native language of "Pemon", the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana, in northern Amazon. This term indicates table-top mountains located in the north-east side of the Amazon forest, between Venezuela and Brasil.
Tepuis are unique mountains: square-shaped, wide summit surface limited by high vertical walls. Due to strong erosion some Tepuis have the shape of huge isolated towers, up to 1000 m high.
There, many new caves were discovered in the last twenty years, supposed to be the oldest caves on Earth.
The expedition Tepui 2012 is now coming to end, more than a month and a half of research, exploration and documentation in the Venezuelan tepui. This year the programs were limited by bad weather and logistical problems that forced us to change the original targets. Nevertheless, the final report is very positive.
Geological research have ranged from Roraima, to Akopan up to Auyan Tepui, including a geomorphological study of the entire Gran Sabana. Studies were performed on silica dissolved in water, the processes of arenizzation, on speleothems and mineralization inside the caves.
A great new spring has been reached on one of the most impressive walls of Roraima. The exploration of this new system has been hampered by a dangerous full of water, but the distance between the sinkhole and the wall is to assume interesting developments for next year.
Were completed the exploration of System Akopan-Dal Cin with the finding of a new branch, while on the Auyan Tepui were reached some new caves, one of these promise for the future great developments. Only in this tepui, thanks to overflights of our friend and partner Raul Arias, we have identified at least a dozen entries that will be the main target of the next expedition. Once again this huge mountain demonstrates not exausthed the exploration possibilities: after expeditions of the '90s, the discovery of Cueva Guacamaya and Cueva el Águila, new areas are proving to have complex underground systems that will surely give great satisfaction and even new scientific information.
At the same time it was done a remarkable job of documentation with thousands of photos outside and in the cave, but especially with a job to support a crew from BBC who worked on a documentary about Akopan, with spectacular aerial shots of the area and of the entrances in the wall. This documentary is meant to be aired in Europe, USA and Japan, showing the wonders of the underground river that runs through this mountain, a stream of water suspended in time, with a unique geological and biological diversity.
As in the past we return home with the feeling of having made a journey through time in these magical "islands" that have the taste of other worlds. Once again caving in quarz rocks proves to be one of the most fascinating frontiers of exploration in these times.
The team: Carla Corongiu,Vittorio Crobu, Antonio De Vivo, Marco Mecchia, Leonardo Piccini, Enzo Procopio, Laura Sanna, Francesco Sauro, Giacomo Strapazzon, Roberto Trevi, Freddy Vergara.
Since 1993 five expeditions were carried on by La Venta in the tepui Auyan, Chimantha and Roraima. The project is still going on with a new expedition are planned for 2013 on Auyan Tepui.
I have the great pleasure of announcing that the JSPDT (Caving Section of the Tolmin Alpine Club) and ICCC (Imperial College Caving Club) have successfully connected System Migovec and System Vrtnarija during the Sledi Vetra 2012 expedition.
The combined system is now 24.9 km long and 975 m deep.
This makes it by far the longest known cave in Slovenia, in a system where the majority of passage length is at depths of greater than 500 m.
The connection was made at a depth of ~650 m, during the last pushing trip of the expedition. A climb in the Queens Bed Chamber started last year was completed (named Apollo) and led to 420m of passage (The Milky Way) this was then pushed further to eventually reach a PSS from 1998 in Waterloo, SysMig (see Caves and Caving 84 p18 'The Northern Line', or The Hollow Mountain p100 [1]).
Some of the Slovenes have been working on Migovec every year since the 1970s, ICCC since 1994. There are perhaps more than 50 cavers of Migovec out there who contributed to this enormous project, all of whom share in the enjoyment of this moment.
[1] The Hollow Mountain, the expedition report to 2006 is available free of charge online here:
http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/intro/slov_intro.php
Interim reports & surveys for the subsequent years may be found on the individual expedition pages linked above.
We gave a recent extended talk on the 2009-2011 at our University, the slides are online & may be a useful introduction / catch up if you caught one of our Hidden Earth lectures:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/86098004/2012-03-Slovenia-Caving-ICCC-Explo-Soc-Talk#
Find out more at http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/slov2012/
In august 2012 an international group of cavers descended the deepest cave in the world: Krubera-Voronya which is located in Abkhazia (Georgia).
The expedition included around 60 representatives of various foreign countries, mainly Ukrainians, as well as 15 Lithuanians.
The news is still sparse, but it seems that the Ukrainian cave diver Gennadiiy Samokhin, was able to find a new lead and push the depth of worlds deepest cave to a new record of 2197 m.
This is six meters deeper than the previous record.
A big thanks goes out to the Lithuanian's support team who laid out all the lines.
As for now it remains the only cave with a depth of more than 2000 meters.
The expedition had to deal with high water levels and had some technicial problems (communication was lost for a while) during the beginning of the expedition.
Jurkėnienė said reaching the surface safely was the team's main task now.
"There have been no heavy showers this week but weather conditions remain bad. It is still raining and conditions inside the case are rather bad. They said three siphons they have to dive through to reach the bottom are flooded. It will be a bit harder to come out."
Lithuanian Vytis Vilkas had planned to reach the record depth but he dropped the plan after his health deteriorated.
A few highlights of this year's Pearse Resurgence expedition in New Zealand, where divers pushed the cave to a new depth of 221m and discovered another 100m of passage.
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-- The Wet Mules have just completed the 2012 expedition to the Pearse River Resurgence near Mt Arthur in the South Island of New Zealand. The six Mules (David Bardi, Craig Challen, John Dalla-Zuanna, Richard “Harry” Harris, Ken Smith and Sandy Varin), were accompanied by diving physician and support Dr Karen Richardson for the 17 day trip.
Both primary objectives of the trip were accomplished. With the assistance of Nelson Speleological Group’s Andrew Smith and Dawn Wood, dye tracing from the Spillway in Nettlebed Cave again confirmed the connection between the two sites. Unfortunately, the dye appeared to be coming from the main passage deeper than 120m, so any hopes of making a shallow connection were lost.
Hence attention shifted back to pushing the deep section of the cave, and once the four habitats were installed at 7, 16, 28 and 38m, and gas was staged in the cave, build-up dives commenced.
On Thursday 12th January Dave and Sandy dived to 180m and completed an extraordinary 7 hour all in-water decompression.
The following day Richard Harris pushed past the end of Craig’s 2011 line at 194m, and laid 70m of line in large passage to a maximum depth of 207m. A total run time of 10½ hours was spent in comfort thanks to the habitats and the surface supplied suit-heating systems.
After two days of rain the resurgence flooded, delaying diving for a day. The final push dive by Craig Challen began on Sunday 15th January as the water levels subsided. Tying off to the end of Harry’s line, he scootered on a short distance only to meet another steep descent. Craig made a final tie off at 221m and returned to the surface after a total dive time of 17 hours. The passage continues beyond, heading deeper.
Ken, JDZ and Craig made tape measure surveys of several areas including the Nightmare Crescent and Big Room area at 120m.
One of the aims of the Gibraltar Museum is to encourage volunteer participation in the study of our history and the care of our heritage. With the start of the Gorham’s Cave excavations, help with processing finds will be among the tasks suitable for volunteer effort under supervision. But the involvement of volunteers goes further.
Recently, as part of the wider Gibraltar Caves Project, which was started in 1991,the Cave Unit of the Gibraltar Museum has been working with volunteers in the surveying of Gibraltar’s caves. This is specialised work which is carried out under supervision and is already producing excellent results. The unit is preparing an inventory of Gibraltar’s caves, checking previous work done and looking at each site today. The number of caves now exceeds 200!
Part of the work involves assessing the archaeological and palaeontological potential of each site. Some of these caves were last excavated in the 19th Century, so determining how much archaeology is left is a major challenge.
Others were excavated in the 1960s by the late Mr George Palao, and the unit has not only used Mr Palao’s reports which are in the archives of museum, but has also met with some of his collaborators in order to obtain as much information as possible. The unit is also in contact with - and collaborating with - the GONHS Cliffs and Caves Section who have also worked a number of Gibraltar’s caves.
English version of the award winning documentary by Marcus Taylor, showing the exploration of the cave system sima GESM - Sima de la Luz.
The documentary was mainly shot during the 2006 expedition and gives the live report of the discoveries from -950 m and on.
More information on this cave can be found at the dedicated page of the Spanish federation or on the website of the explorers: http://www.espeleoclubpasoslargos.com/
The documentary is split into three parts of about 12 miutes each. Click read more for the other video's.
A few days ago we already reported about this expedition. See this blog post for the video of the dive.
Now Krzysztof Starnawski sent an update with a new map of the cave and some extra pictures and tells us firsthand how the expedition went:
"We just concluded another two day exploration of Hranicka Propast cave. This time i laid guide line from 196 m. to 217 m., passing on 200 meters restriction discovered during our January 2012 expedition.
This restriction is created by fallen rocks and waterlogged tree trunks. Newly discovered passage is huge and has potential to reach 400 meters. Cave is situated in calcium sediment rock which is 600 meters thick, water is warm with heavy mineral content which tells us that is coming from below limestone.
Outcome of our last expedition with terrain geology knowledge allows us to hope that Hranicka Propast can become the deepest submerged cave in the world and her depth can be over 400 meters. Reach to this type of depth is just a question of time since passage is already mapped and guide line is secured.
Restriction discovered in January ended up being way easier than I expected, not that narrow and as I was hoping leads to deeper parts of the cave. Only problem is large amount of waterlogged tree trunks and huge boulders. Thankfully, diver using CCR is not generating large amounts of gas bubbles which could destabilize this tight spot.
Cave divers discovered several new species - a transparent amphipod, a worm, and a small snail -in the Pearse Resurgence, a system in the remote Motueka Valley on the South island of New Zealand near Nelson. Pearse Resurgence is connected to the Nettlebed Cave, a deep, extensive cave system in the Mount Arthur Range. It was thought to be the deepest cave system in the southern hemisphere until divers pushed deeper in the nearby Ellis Basin cave system during an expedition in April 2010.
"It's not easy to get inside the caves, and we want to know about the very specific life in them," says Dr. Graham Fenwick, a scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). "It's important to do an inventory of life in New Zealand, and in this case, it's a pretty special type of environment, and we don't have many limestone karst systems that are readily explored."
Worldwide, these aquifer studies are yielding rich troves of biodiversity. The importance of the stygofauna is twofold - they contribute to the health of the aquifer by biofiltration and in turn they may represent an important marker of the health of the water.
The Hranická Propast cave is located in the east of the Czech Republic, near the town of Moravě.
To enter the cave you have to climb the 315 m high Hůrka hill. Previously divers have installed a cable guidance system to lower their gear easily.
Diving in the cave is pleasant as the water temperatue is about 15-16°C all year round.
The first dives in the cave were done in the sixties. As the system got deeper and deeper people started wondering how far it would go and send in remotely operated vehicles (ROV) in search for the bottom of the well.
Krzysztof Starnawski is now pushing the limits even further.
During a 7.5 h dive, he reached an incredible depth of 217 m. The previous record was -200 m which he accomplished earlier this year. See the bottom of this post for the previous video report.
Below you can see a video report of a the Czech Cave Diving Expedition in the Hranická Propast system, where diver Starnawski went to a depth of 217 m. The film was shot with a GoPro camera, and GRALmarine light.
More info on the cave can be found at his webpage http://www.dualrebreather.com or at http://www.hranickapropast.cz
During several dives in May and June in the "Résurgence du Bateau", in the Ardèche region in central France, JP Baudu succeeded to push the known section of the resurgence from 800 m to 1330 m and succesfully connect it to the St-Marcel d'Ardèche cave system, adding two more entrances to the system (Bateau & Ecluse).
The sump is currently the longest one known in the Ardèche region.
Expedition details:
* First weekend in May: JP & Catherine Baudu put a new line up to 700 m. Visibility: 3 m
* June 9th: JP Baudu continued to put a new line up to 998 m, surpassing the old terminus (800 m) and surveyed at the same time. There seems to be a tunnel on the right side. Visibility: 2 m, dive time: 4 h. Participants: Seb Rocheil, Philippe Imbert, Calos Placido, Catherine Baudu
* June 16th: JP Baudu continues to explore the newly discovered section up to 1330 m ending on a pit at -65 m, where the connection with the St-Marcel d'Ardèche cave system was made. Visibility: 3 m at the start, 1.5 m at the pit. Dive time: 5 h.
Participants: Catherine Baudu, Carlos Placido (Mowgli), Frank Vasseur, Frédéric Bonacossa, Olivier Dufourneaud, Yannick Bohbot
The team wishes to thank Philippe Brunet for all the info on the cave system as well as topo points.
Additional data:
More information on the Bateau-Ecluse system can be found at 1001Siphons.
Click here for a hydrogeological study of the system by Philippe Brunet.
A nice book about the cave has been published in 2008 and is available from Spelunca Library for € 29.
In early May, a team of experienced cave explorers climbed more than 410 feet into a high dome in Lechuguilla Cave, led by Derek Bristol of Colorado.
Upon reaching the top, lead climber James Hunter discovered a maze of previously unknown passages, pits and large rooms, which they called collectively, Oz. One large room measured 600 feet long, 100 to 150 feet wide, and 75 to 150 feet high. It was dubbed Munchkin Land.
Lechuguilla Cave is an extensive cave system in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, known worldwide for its large rooms, unusual minerals, massive and fragile cave formations, and importance in scientific study. This discovery heralds new areas for physical and scientific exploration.
Since mapping began in 1986, explorers have surveyed more than 134.6 miles of cave passages in Lechuguilla Cave. Because of its delicate environment and scientific importance, only about 100 people, usually vetted explorers and scientists, are permitted to enter the cave every year.
Ten cavers from Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, California and Arizona participated in the eight-day underground expedition that made the latest discoveries, the greatest amount of distance added to the survey in one day since 1989.
Using laser distance meters, Bristol's team measured the distance from the floor to the final rope anchor of the dome, finding they had climbed 510 feet, making it the deepest pit (natural, direct, vertical expanse) known in the park.
"To understand the sheer size of this space, imagine that a 51-story tower could fit inside," explained Stan Allison, Carlsbad Caverns National Park cave technician.
Forty-one caves have been discovered at the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park-World Heritage Site since March, said the park management board in the central province of Quang Binh on Tuesday.
The caves were discovered by explorers of the British Royal Cave Research Association, along a 20 kilometre stretch.
Of the 41 new caves, the Ky cave is the deepest one found in Vietnam. The widest is Cua Nho, though its entrance is so narrow that only one person can pass through. However, in its inside it widens to give a huge feeling of spaciousness.
Luu Minh Thanh, director of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, said that Japan’s National Television Station (NHK) will arrive by April 26 to make a film on Son Doong Cave, which will be widely broadcast in 200 nations and territories across the globe.
One of the recently-discovered caves in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Binh has a name now: Thach Thuy or Water Stalagmite. The name was chosen among hundreds of suggestions put forth by Tuoi Tre readers.
Thach Thuy is part of 7 caves discovered in March in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park - famous for its cavern system - by a group of UK explorers headed by Howard Limbert.
Instead of naming it, Howard left the honor to Tuoi Tre Newspaper which then launched a contest calling on its readers to suggest ideas for the name.
Four UK explorers including Howard plus a translator were responsible for picking out a winning entry and they selected Thach Thuy, which was recommended by four readers who therefore win a free trip worth VND10 million (US$500) each to the site.
(From L) Mong Tuyen, Phuong Thanh, Lai Xi Dieu, three readers selected Thach Thuy as a name of a new-found cave in Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park and won a free trip each to the site.
Winner Phuong Thanh (29) told Tuoi Tre she had been pondering long and hard at the marvel of nature that crafted such beautiful stalagmites rising up from sparkling water.
“Water and rocks seem intertwined”, she added, convinced that the name Water Stalagmite is a fitting description.
A French-Swiss team of cavers has released photographs and a film from its latest expedition to a huge network of chambers and sinkholes beneath the Nakanai Ranges of West New Britain, in Papua New Guinea.
The film has premiered at a mountaineering film festival in the French city of Grenoble, and photos from the WOWO 2012 expedition will soon be available on the web.
To find out more about this underworld Isabelle Genoux talked to French speleologist and photographer Philip Bence.
The interview can be listened to on Radio Australia.
New discovery: The giant underground chamber, named
The Frozen Deep, that has recently been found inside Cheddar
Gorge in Somerset.
A group of cave divers have uncovered a massive chamber below the Cheddar Gorge after four years of searching and hundreds of hours of digging.
The huge space, which had been named 'The Frozen Deep' by the team, is a staggering 60 metres in diameter and reaches up to 30 metres high.
It contains stunning calcite formations - including two pure white columns each standing at five-metres tall - surrounded by white flowstone on the walls and floor.
'Tuesday Diggers', a group of local cave divers, discovered the chamber after spending four hours a week for four years digging, breaking rocks and opening 50cm passages.
Hugh Cornwell, director of Cheddar Gorge and Caves, in Somerset, said: 'This is a truly significant discovery by the 'Diggers' which opens up a fascinating new chapter in the history of Mendip cave exploration.
'The question already emerging is whether they can now find a connection from The Frozen Deep to the River Cave.
An ongoing joint expedition of caving clubs from several Siberian sities to Sarma Cave in the Arabika Massif (Western Caucasus), led by Pavel Rudko, has reported that the cave has been pushed 60 m below the previous deepest point (-1760 m) reached last year.
This firmly establishes Sarma Cave as the second deepest cave in the world with depth of 1830 m, following Krubera Cave, located in the same massif, which has been explored this August to -2197 m by the Ukrainian expedition. The third place is hold by Snezhnaya Cave in the nearby Bzybsky Massif, with a depth of 1760 m.
The word Tepui means "house of the gods" in the native language of "Pemon", the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana, in northern Amazon. This term indicates table-top mountains located in the north-east side of the Amazon forest, between Venezuela and Brasil.
Tepuis are unique mountains: square-shaped, wide summit surface limited by high vertical walls. Due to strong erosion some Tepuis have the shape of huge isolated towers, up to 1000 m high.
There, many new caves were discovered in the last twenty years, supposed to be the oldest caves on Earth.
The expedition Tepui 2012 is now coming to end, more than a month and a half of research, exploration and documentation in the Venezuelan tepui. This year the programs were limited by bad weather and logistical problems that forced us to change the original targets. Nevertheless, the final report is very positive.
Geological research have ranged from Roraima, to Akopan up to Auyan Tepui, including a geomorphological study of the entire Gran Sabana. Studies were performed on silica dissolved in water, the processes of arenizzation, on speleothems and mineralization inside the caves.
A great new spring has been reached on one of the most impressive walls of Roraima. The exploration of this new system has been hampered by a dangerous full of water, but the distance between the sinkhole and the wall is to assume interesting developments for next year.
Were completed the exploration of System Akopan-Dal Cin with the finding of a new branch, while on the Auyan Tepui were reached some new caves, one of these promise for the future great developments. Only in this tepui, thanks to overflights of our friend and partner Raul Arias, we have identified at least a dozen entries that will be the main target of the next expedition. Once again this huge mountain demonstrates not exausthed the exploration possibilities: after expeditions of the '90s, the discovery of Cueva Guacamaya and Cueva el Águila, new areas are proving to have complex underground systems that will surely give great satisfaction and even new scientific information.
At the same time it was done a remarkable job of documentation with thousands of photos outside and in the cave, but especially with a job to support a crew from BBC who worked on a documentary about Akopan, with spectacular aerial shots of the area and of the entrances in the wall. This documentary is meant to be aired in Europe, USA and Japan, showing the wonders of the underground river that runs through this mountain, a stream of water suspended in time, with a unique geological and biological diversity.
As in the past we return home with the feeling of having made a journey through time in these magical "islands" that have the taste of other worlds. Once again caving in quarz rocks proves to be one of the most fascinating frontiers of exploration in these times.
The team: Carla Corongiu,Vittorio Crobu, Antonio De Vivo, Marco Mecchia, Leonardo Piccini, Enzo Procopio, Laura Sanna, Francesco Sauro, Giacomo Strapazzon, Roberto Trevi, Freddy Vergara.
Since 1993 five expeditions were carried on by La Venta in the tepui Auyan, Chimantha and Roraima. The project is still going on with a new expedition are planned for 2013 on Auyan Tepui.
I have the great pleasure of announcing that the JSPDT (Caving Section of the Tolmin Alpine Club) and ICCC (Imperial College Caving Club) have successfully connected System Migovec and System Vrtnarija during the Sledi Vetra 2012 expedition.
The combined system is now 24.9 km long and 975 m deep.
This makes it by far the longest known cave in Slovenia, in a system where the majority of passage length is at depths of greater than 500 m.
The connection was made at a depth of ~650 m, during the last pushing trip of the expedition. A climb in the Queens Bed Chamber started last year was completed (named Apollo) and led to 420m of passage (The Milky Way) this was then pushed further to eventually reach a PSS from 1998 in Waterloo, SysMig (see Caves and Caving 84 p18 'The Northern Line', or The Hollow Mountain p100 [1]).
Some of the Slovenes have been working on Migovec every year since the 1970s, ICCC since 1994. There are perhaps more than 50 cavers of Migovec out there who contributed to this enormous project, all of whom share in the enjoyment of this moment.
[1] The Hollow Mountain, the expedition report to 2006 is available free of charge online here:
http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/intro/slov_intro.php
Interim reports & surveys for the subsequent years may be found on the individual expedition pages linked above.
We gave a recent extended talk on the 2009-2011 at our University, the slides are online & may be a useful introduction / catch up if you caught one of our Hidden Earth lectures:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/86098004/2012-03-Slovenia-Caving-ICCC-Explo-Soc-Talk#
Find out more at http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/slov2012/
In august 2012 an international group of cavers descended the deepest cave in the world: Krubera-Voronya which is located in Abkhazia (Georgia).
The expedition included around 60 representatives of various foreign countries, mainly Ukrainians, as well as 15 Lithuanians.
The news is still sparse, but it seems that the Ukrainian cave diver Gennadiiy Samokhin, was able to find a new lead and push the depth of worlds deepest cave to a new record of 2197 m.
This is six meters deeper than the previous record.
A big thanks goes out to the Lithuanian's support team who laid out all the lines.
As for now it remains the only cave with a depth of more than 2000 meters.
The expedition had to deal with high water levels and had some technicial problems (communication was lost for a while) during the beginning of the expedition.
Jurkėnienė said reaching the surface safely was the team's main task now.
"There have been no heavy showers this week but weather conditions remain bad. It is still raining and conditions inside the case are rather bad. They said three siphons they have to dive through to reach the bottom are flooded. It will be a bit harder to come out."
Lithuanian Vytis Vilkas had planned to reach the record depth but he dropped the plan after his health deteriorated.
A few highlights of this year's Pearse Resurgence expedition in New Zealand, where divers pushed the cave to a new depth of 221m and discovered another 100m of passage.
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-- The Wet Mules have just completed the 2012 expedition to the Pearse River Resurgence near Mt Arthur in the South Island of New Zealand. The six Mules (David Bardi, Craig Challen, John Dalla-Zuanna, Richard “Harry” Harris, Ken Smith and Sandy Varin), were accompanied by diving physician and support Dr Karen Richardson for the 17 day trip.
Both primary objectives of the trip were accomplished. With the assistance of Nelson Speleological Group’s Andrew Smith and Dawn Wood, dye tracing from the Spillway in Nettlebed Cave again confirmed the connection between the two sites. Unfortunately, the dye appeared to be coming from the main passage deeper than 120m, so any hopes of making a shallow connection were lost.
Hence attention shifted back to pushing the deep section of the cave, and once the four habitats were installed at 7, 16, 28 and 38m, and gas was staged in the cave, build-up dives commenced.
On Thursday 12th January Dave and Sandy dived to 180m and completed an extraordinary 7 hour all in-water decompression.
The following day Richard Harris pushed past the end of Craig’s 2011 line at 194m, and laid 70m of line in large passage to a maximum depth of 207m. A total run time of 10½ hours was spent in comfort thanks to the habitats and the surface supplied suit-heating systems.
After two days of rain the resurgence flooded, delaying diving for a day. The final push dive by Craig Challen began on Sunday 15th January as the water levels subsided. Tying off to the end of Harry’s line, he scootered on a short distance only to meet another steep descent. Craig made a final tie off at 221m and returned to the surface after a total dive time of 17 hours. The passage continues beyond, heading deeper.
Ken, JDZ and Craig made tape measure surveys of several areas including the Nightmare Crescent and Big Room area at 120m.
One of the aims of the Gibraltar Museum is to encourage volunteer participation in the study of our history and the care of our heritage. With the start of the Gorham’s Cave excavations, help with processing finds will be among the tasks suitable for volunteer effort under supervision. But the involvement of volunteers goes further.
Recently, as part of the wider Gibraltar Caves Project, which was started in 1991,the Cave Unit of the Gibraltar Museum has been working with volunteers in the surveying of Gibraltar’s caves. This is specialised work which is carried out under supervision and is already producing excellent results. The unit is preparing an inventory of Gibraltar’s caves, checking previous work done and looking at each site today. The number of caves now exceeds 200!
Part of the work involves assessing the archaeological and palaeontological potential of each site. Some of these caves were last excavated in the 19th Century, so determining how much archaeology is left is a major challenge.
Others were excavated in the 1960s by the late Mr George Palao, and the unit has not only used Mr Palao’s reports which are in the archives of museum, but has also met with some of his collaborators in order to obtain as much information as possible. The unit is also in contact with - and collaborating with - the GONHS Cliffs and Caves Section who have also worked a number of Gibraltar’s caves.
English version of the award winning documentary by Marcus Taylor, showing the exploration of the cave system sima GESM - Sima de la Luz.
The documentary was mainly shot during the 2006 expedition and gives the live report of the discoveries from -950 m and on.
More information on this cave can be found at the dedicated page of the Spanish federation or on the website of the explorers: http://www.espeleoclubpasoslargos.com/
The documentary is split into three parts of about 12 miutes each. Click read more for the other video's.
A few days ago we already reported about this expedition. See this blog post for the video of the dive.
Now Krzysztof Starnawski sent an update with a new map of the cave and some extra pictures and tells us firsthand how the expedition went:
"We just concluded another two day exploration of Hranicka Propast cave. This time i laid guide line from 196 m. to 217 m., passing on 200 meters restriction discovered during our January 2012 expedition.
This restriction is created by fallen rocks and waterlogged tree trunks. Newly discovered passage is huge and has potential to reach 400 meters. Cave is situated in calcium sediment rock which is 600 meters thick, water is warm with heavy mineral content which tells us that is coming from below limestone.
Outcome of our last expedition with terrain geology knowledge allows us to hope that Hranicka Propast can become the deepest submerged cave in the world and her depth can be over 400 meters. Reach to this type of depth is just a question of time since passage is already mapped and guide line is secured.
Restriction discovered in January ended up being way easier than I expected, not that narrow and as I was hoping leads to deeper parts of the cave. Only problem is large amount of waterlogged tree trunks and huge boulders. Thankfully, diver using CCR is not generating large amounts of gas bubbles which could destabilize this tight spot.
Cave divers discovered several new species - a transparent amphipod, a worm, and a small snail -in the Pearse Resurgence, a system in the remote Motueka Valley on the South island of New Zealand near Nelson. Pearse Resurgence is connected to the Nettlebed Cave, a deep, extensive cave system in the Mount Arthur Range. It was thought to be the deepest cave system in the southern hemisphere until divers pushed deeper in the nearby Ellis Basin cave system during an expedition in April 2010.
"It's not easy to get inside the caves, and we want to know about the very specific life in them," says Dr. Graham Fenwick, a scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). "It's important to do an inventory of life in New Zealand, and in this case, it's a pretty special type of environment, and we don't have many limestone karst systems that are readily explored."
Worldwide, these aquifer studies are yielding rich troves of biodiversity. The importance of the stygofauna is twofold - they contribute to the health of the aquifer by biofiltration and in turn they may represent an important marker of the health of the water.
The Hranická Propast cave is located in the east of the Czech Republic, near the town of Moravě.
To enter the cave you have to climb the 315 m high Hůrka hill. Previously divers have installed a cable guidance system to lower their gear easily.
Diving in the cave is pleasant as the water temperatue is about 15-16°C all year round.
The first dives in the cave were done in the sixties. As the system got deeper and deeper people started wondering how far it would go and send in remotely operated vehicles (ROV) in search for the bottom of the well.
Krzysztof Starnawski is now pushing the limits even further.
During a 7.5 h dive, he reached an incredible depth of 217 m. The previous record was -200 m which he accomplished earlier this year. See the bottom of this post for the previous video report.
Below you can see a video report of a the Czech Cave Diving Expedition in the Hranická Propast system, where diver Starnawski went to a depth of 217 m. The film was shot with a GoPro camera, and GRALmarine light.
More info on the cave can be found at his webpage http://www.dualrebreather.com or at http://www.hranickapropast.cz
During several dives in May and June in the "Résurgence du Bateau", in the Ardèche region in central France, JP Baudu succeeded to push the known section of the resurgence from 800 m to 1330 m and succesfully connect it to the St-Marcel d'Ardèche cave system, adding two more entrances to the system (Bateau & Ecluse).
The sump is currently the longest one known in the Ardèche region.
Expedition details:
* First weekend in May: JP & Catherine Baudu put a new line up to 700 m. Visibility: 3 m
* June 9th: JP Baudu continued to put a new line up to 998 m, surpassing the old terminus (800 m) and surveyed at the same time. There seems to be a tunnel on the right side. Visibility: 2 m, dive time: 4 h. Participants: Seb Rocheil, Philippe Imbert, Calos Placido, Catherine Baudu
* June 16th: JP Baudu continues to explore the newly discovered section up to 1330 m ending on a pit at -65 m, where the connection with the St-Marcel d'Ardèche cave system was made. Visibility: 3 m at the start, 1.5 m at the pit. Dive time: 5 h.
Participants: Catherine Baudu, Carlos Placido (Mowgli), Frank Vasseur, Frédéric Bonacossa, Olivier Dufourneaud, Yannick Bohbot
The team wishes to thank Philippe Brunet for all the info on the cave system as well as topo points.
Additional data:
More information on the Bateau-Ecluse system can be found at 1001Siphons.
Click here for a hydrogeological study of the system by Philippe Brunet.
A nice book about the cave has been published in 2008 and is available from Spelunca Library for € 29.
In early May, a team of experienced cave explorers climbed more than 410 feet into a high dome in Lechuguilla Cave, led by Derek Bristol of Colorado.
Upon reaching the top, lead climber James Hunter discovered a maze of previously unknown passages, pits and large rooms, which they called collectively, Oz. One large room measured 600 feet long, 100 to 150 feet wide, and 75 to 150 feet high. It was dubbed Munchkin Land.
Lechuguilla Cave is an extensive cave system in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, known worldwide for its large rooms, unusual minerals, massive and fragile cave formations, and importance in scientific study. This discovery heralds new areas for physical and scientific exploration.
Since mapping began in 1986, explorers have surveyed more than 134.6 miles of cave passages in Lechuguilla Cave. Because of its delicate environment and scientific importance, only about 100 people, usually vetted explorers and scientists, are permitted to enter the cave every year.
Ten cavers from Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, California and Arizona participated in the eight-day underground expedition that made the latest discoveries, the greatest amount of distance added to the survey in one day since 1989.
Using laser distance meters, Bristol's team measured the distance from the floor to the final rope anchor of the dome, finding they had climbed 510 feet, making it the deepest pit (natural, direct, vertical expanse) known in the park.
"To understand the sheer size of this space, imagine that a 51-story tower could fit inside," explained Stan Allison, Carlsbad Caverns National Park cave technician.
Forty-one caves have been discovered at the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park-World Heritage Site since March, said the park management board in the central province of Quang Binh on Tuesday.
The caves were discovered by explorers of the British Royal Cave Research Association, along a 20 kilometre stretch.
Of the 41 new caves, the Ky cave is the deepest one found in Vietnam. The widest is Cua Nho, though its entrance is so narrow that only one person can pass through. However, in its inside it widens to give a huge feeling of spaciousness.
Luu Minh Thanh, director of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, said that Japan’s National Television Station (NHK) will arrive by April 26 to make a film on Son Doong Cave, which will be widely broadcast in 200 nations and territories across the globe.
One of the recently-discovered caves in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Binh has a name now: Thach Thuy or Water Stalagmite. The name was chosen among hundreds of suggestions put forth by Tuoi Tre readers.
Thach Thuy is part of 7 caves discovered in March in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park - famous for its cavern system - by a group of UK explorers headed by Howard Limbert.
Instead of naming it, Howard left the honor to Tuoi Tre Newspaper which then launched a contest calling on its readers to suggest ideas for the name.
Four UK explorers including Howard plus a translator were responsible for picking out a winning entry and they selected Thach Thuy, which was recommended by four readers who therefore win a free trip worth VND10 million (US$500) each to the site.
(From L) Mong Tuyen, Phuong Thanh, Lai Xi Dieu, three readers selected Thach Thuy as a name of a new-found cave in Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park and won a free trip each to the site.
Winner Phuong Thanh (29) told Tuoi Tre she had been pondering long and hard at the marvel of nature that crafted such beautiful stalagmites rising up from sparkling water.
“Water and rocks seem intertwined”, she added, convinced that the name Water Stalagmite is a fitting description.
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