ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (8 July 2004) -- Those who have never explored a Florida underwater cave wonder why anybody in his right mind would even be interested. Sitting at the breakfast table, eating our cereal, we imagine the descent into the cavern, the thrill of exploring an alien world and then the moment when the diver realizes that something has gone terribly amiss. We imagine the panic and the backtracking, the black shadows dancing across the walls in the fading light of the lantern, perhaps the fleeting thought of loved ones who will so terribly miss their husband or son or daddy. From there everything goes downhill. Most of us have never experienced Florida's greatest wilderness. Underground Florida is too inaccessible and demanding and claustrophobic for ordinary people. We have dry caves that are smaller versions of the spectacular caves found in Kentucky and in the American Southwest, caves that feature awesome rocks and formations and countless opportunities to fall a long way to death. LOTS OF CAVES But few places on the planet have underwater caves to rival ours. Most are accessible through crystal-water springs in Central and North Florida. Some are miles long and hundreds of feet deep. Some are narrow and twisting, others cavernous. Divers require specialized equipment, training and nerve. Like test pilots, astronauts and ancient mariners, cave divers are a special breed willing to die for their passion. Since 1960, more than 430 cave divers have lost their lives in Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean, according to the National Speleological Society. Most were foolish, under-equipped rookies, but some were obsessively careful people who knew exactly what they were doing until the end. By most accounts, John Robinson Jr., 36, of St. Petersburg and Craig Simon, 44, of Spring Hill were careful, well-trained, experienced cave divers who used state-of-the-art equipment. By most accounts, they were up to the challenge of exploring the Eagle's Nest, an underwater cave in Hernando County on Florida's Gulf Coast north of St. Petersburg. For cave divers around the world, Eagle's Nest is a Mecca, the Grand Canyon of underwater caves. It begins in an ordinary pond about 200 feet wide in the woods. At the bottom of the pond is a kind of chimney that descends hundreds of feet into a cavern large enough to contain most of a big sports arena. Beyond what divers call the ''Main Ballroom'' are longer tunnels and crannies that descend even deeper. How far do they go? Nobody knows. | | And nobody can know what happened in the last few hours and minutes and seconds in the lives of those two adventuresome men on June 12. We can only imagine. We can imagine the two friends driving past The Home Depots and McDonald's and Olive Gardens of U.S. 19 and turning west at Weeki Wachee on State Road 50. They drive pickup trucks off the pavement into the woods. For five miles or so, they bounce along a winding dirt road that turns into truck-swallowing sand and mud. But their trucks are equipped to handle deep sand and mud. It is simple to get lost here, to take the wrong fork in the road, but they don't. They drive through sand pines and palmetto thickets and oak hammocks and cypress swamps and finally park. DEEP IN THE WOODS They unload their dive equipment and their underwater scooters. They are miles from pavement and people. When they aren't talking, they can hear wilderness Florida in a way city people can only dream of. They hear the cries of red-shouldered hawks and the chirps of the cardinals and the chattering of squirrels. Perhaps they even hear a turkey. The woods are full of them. They pull on their wet suits, adjust their tanks and masks and lights, and lumber into the water. The water is 70 degrees, but cave divers don't mind the cold. The bird sounds vanish the instant the divers' heads go under. Now the soundtrack is their own breathing and the gurgle of bubbles and perhaps the hum of the scooters if they are operating. Below them is the dark hole of the cavern shaft, the abyss. The Main Ballroom awaits. As they descended into that clear water, they must have felt like they would live forever. |
