Hey, DiveTable community, Jay here. And I'm excited to bring you this little surface interval, a day in the life of some cave divers. Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in Florida, specifically in Mariana, Florida, which is the northwest portion of Florida. And we were staying with an operation that's called the overhead environment. Check them out.
They took care of us, filled our tanks, filled our bellies, filled our souls with fire pits for two weeks living on their property. And it was an incredible experience. And this particular operation sits in a place called Merritt's Mill Pond. And Merritt's Mill Pond is unique because there are actually three, there's more than that, but there are three diveable cave systems that exist on the pond. One, it's probably the most well -known is called JB or Jackson Blue.
There's another one called twin caves and another one called hole in the wall. And we had the opportunity to dive all of them, but I thought it might be interesting for you to hear a little bit of behind the scenes of what happens on a full day of cave diving. And so myself, Ben Boss, the training director of UTD and Kevin Wood, who is also a UTD instructor and has been a teammate of mine for quite some time, flipped on the microphone and are bringing you along the trip.
of a big dive that we did at JB. And hopefully it's interesting to you. Hopefully it's something that gives you a little insight and behind the scenes into what it's like to spend the day cave diving. And for those of you that are cave divers, I think this will resonate as a day that you typically understand. For those of you that aren't or that are aspiring to become that, it gives you a little behind the scenes of what we did.
Jay
The last piece I want to mention is I really enjoyed my time there in Mariana, Florida, as it kind of turned into an impromptu unified team diving cave week. There were a couple of students there actually taking their first cave one and cave two course and were successful in completing that. And obviously their instructor was Ben. There were a couple of others, James and Brando from a podcast you might also listen to called the great dive podcast.
Who were there with us working on underwater photography. And there was myself and Kevin who have been teammates for a long time, who were just fun diving for a couple of weeks. And so it was really cool to see three different teams yet all unified in our approach, able to dive together, able to go to the site together, but work on different things. And I really enjoyed our time there. So shout out to Chris and Katie. Congratulations on your.
earning your cave one and cave two. Shout out to James and Brando, Brando specifically for the amazing shots you took underwater that we've been able to share. And finally a shout out and heartfelt thanks to Kevin Wood, who has been my teammate amongst thick and thin for lots of different training, but also a lot of different fun dives. We had a blast and I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes look at a day in the life of cave diver.
Jay Gardner (00:01.902)
Hey everyone, welcome to this little surface interval. It's early in the morning here in Mariana, Florida. Been here for a week and a half now. And last week was an amazing kind of impromptu UTD cave week where a bunch of cave divers and some students that were finishing their cave two course all converged on Mariana and we went diving.
and three of us stayed behind to continue diving. And so today we're going to do a little behind the scenes look at a day in the life of a cave dive here in Marion, Florida, and let you in on our planning, pre -dive, the whole nine yards. And hopefully it turns out to be a nice listen for you and a nice way to kind of see how.
we approach our cave dives. So looking forward to this episode, looking forward to today's diving and most of all, looking forward to being under the water again and having an amazing day.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:03.342)
So we've had some coffee How many cups have you had now Kevin? Two. Two? He's now a lot. You gotta count your cans of... Okay, so it's two cups of coffee and one 300 milligram can of boss. Yeah, so 18 cups of coffee. Kevin is awake. Kevin's awake. And I'm here with Kevin Wood, who's been a teammate of mine for a very long time, and Ben Boss, the training director of UTD, and...
that on the podcast before and we are going diving today in Jackson blue here in Marianas. So we've had some breakfast, some coffee, eggs and all kinds of tasty things. And we're sitting here finishing up our dive plan for the day. So Ben, what are we going to do today? We're going to go diving, dive, cave dive. That's called JB Jackson blue.
And we're going to have two stages with us and a little oxygen bottle. So we're going to see if we can get a bit further into the cave. And right now just doing the planning so we don't encounter any surprises down there. Other than cave sharks. Those might surprise us. Everything else should not be surprising. They're hibernating right now. They're hibernating.
That's where the sharks go to spend the winters, to the caves, and then they go back to the ocean. That's what I thought. Exactly. Yeah, it should be fun. And this is part of the cave. This is farther in this cave than I have been or you have been, Ben. But Kevin, you've been just slightly farther. Just slightly farther than what we're planning to do today. But yeah, it's a big dive. I mean, it's a two stage doubles on our back and we're going to rack up.
some deco that we'll need to deal with at the very end. So big dive, take some planning, but it should be an absolutely wonderful day. Any last thoughts, fellas, before we start to work on gear and get stages set up and all the other fun stuff that we need to do? No, I mean, we looked at what the expected distances and times we need to use to get to certain landmarks in the cave using the map we're now staring at.
The Dive Table Podcast (02:16.974)
and that gives us an idea beforehand where we can stage our stages. So have a little look, see where it makes sense. So we don't put a stage cylinder in the middle of a big floaty line and either pull that up to the ceiling or pull it down in the mud. So look for a tie off point and we can see that the spots we've been looking at, they make sense from a gas usage and a time usage point of view.
Then obviously we looked at how much deco are we expecting to hit at those spots because we need to think proactively of our deco because the cylinder we have at 20 feet 6 meters only can give us 30 minutes of deco. So no computer in the world is able to tell you what your deco schedule will be at different depths when you're at depth.
it might give you a total time for your total ascent time and it'll give you a ceiling and the time of the first stop but that's about it so how it's distributed is something that yeah we use ratio DECO 3 .0 for. So now already here we can see where in the cave we will have potentially racked up X amount of DECO. Right.
And by doing that we can then this guide here looking at the map where we go and how far we can go in because obviously if we're
almost swimming at a one -to -one ratio. We know if we can swim five more minutes into this cave from this point, it means we have 10 more minutes of deco because we're going to go five minutes back as well. So that's nice by doing it beforehand, we can have a little idea and underwater when we look at each other and make decisions, we kind of know what we're thinking because we've saw, okay, this is a drop -off point and this is a tee or a drop -off point. Then we can do a recalculation and the rear summer does our pre -
The Dive Table Podcast (04:16.336)
made plan we're talking about now, does it actually pan out? Are we within that ballpark? We usually are, but it's nice. You never know. Do you have to wait for teams coming out of restrictions? Is there a hiccup with the tie -in? You gotta wait for someone with doing training dives like we were doing last year, last week with the students that were here. You never know what happens and it might cost you a couple of minutes. Is there a big old ROV or whatever?
that thing was if is sunfish in the cave yeah line is everywhere all around yeah scientific project they were doing all you never know you never know yeah I think and I think that's kind of the beauty of it is you know we the t -shirt always says you know plan your dive and dive your plan yeah and it's true we're planning our dive and we're going to dive that but we're going to take into account the things that we don't know now in our plan like yeah
How strong is the flow? Are there other people in the cave? Exactly. You know, maybe we've seen more than we thought. Tanks cool off more than we thought, which means we have less gas than we planned for, you know, once we're in the water. So I think it's a really good example of that, you know, thinking portion of it's not just, you know, right now, it's also as we go and reassess, like you say, underwater and make calls based on decisions as a team based on.
what we are having in the actual dive. I think that's key too. It's not just, hey, Ben is going, Ben is obviously the most experienced diver amongst us.
but it's not Ben making the decision. It's the whole team making the decision. Ben may say, suggest something and we may confirm or deny that, but I think that's an important piece of this team diving piece. a hundred percent. At that point, it's nullified because regardless of the experience, you can make mistakes. So I think about...
The Dive Table Podcast (06:10.798)
the pre -made plan and I adjust the plan according to on the fly battlefield calculations and I confirm, hey, I think we can actually swim a little bit more in this direction after we come back to our start point. And then you say, yeah, I can confirm. Or I mean, no, you can't because you're the one tying in and you used a bit more gas or whatever. You were in front and kicking a bit more in the flow and we were in your slipstream. You know, I mean.
This is why it works. Yeah, so today's plan, get in and we're going to try to get all the way past what's called the first T in the line into that big room. Do they call that room the quartz squeeze or is that just that section? I think it's just that section. It's a loop that starts at the first T and then branches left and right, connects back at the second T. Yeah, exactly. So.
Perfect. Yeah. So we'll, we'll catch up with you guys when we're putting gear together and getting gas and all the other fun stuff that we've got to do before we go and actually end up at the dive site. Definitely.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:02.318)
Alright, so we're getting things rigged up and tested before we go get some fills here. We've got two stage bottles each and a deco bottle of 40. And we're finishing up here in the shop. We had to rig a few things right there. And we had to like build anything, everything but the cylinder and valve.
But we did it out of what we could find laying around and made it work. So we're getting close to ready to actually load the truck up and get out of here and go diving. So looking forward to that. But yeah, a little bit of work in the workshop beforehand. Basically everything you can do with bungee scissors, string, and a lighter to make it work.
things together. Cool, so we'll check in right before we're loading up the truck and getting things kind of set up and ready to go to actually go diving.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.614)
Alright, so we just checked in, which is part of the deal here. You have to check in and let people know you're going into this particular park and going cave diving. And then you also have to check out, which is unique, I think, to this particular cave. And we just pulled into the park and we've got our tickets. We got tickets right here.
And we're about to unload all of our gear and get set up and go diving. How you guys feeling? Hot. It is hot. It's hot and humid today, but ready for a nice dive. It'll be nice and cool in the water. Which parking spot do you want me to take? Yeah, we've got the, well, almost. There's one other set of divers here at the park today. So we're pretty, it's going to be a good dive. It'll be a good time.
Alright, we'll check back in once we're gear unloaded and all that.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:47.822)
in the back.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.166)
So we're unloading the truck as we speak and getting walking stages back down to the waters so we don't have to carry them with our twin sets on. And it's hot and there's bugs everywhere, but that's cave diving. So all worth it, 100%.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.198)
It's a pretty hot day here in Florida. So we've got our suits on, everything unloaded, stages in the water, and we're heading down to the water to just cool off for a minute.
before we go through checks and all that. This is nice. Feels nice, huh?
The Dive Table Podcast (00:29.102)
chance to just cool off in the hot sun for a minute get out of the bugs. I see you making bubbles. A nice little hack to keep yourself and your brain in the game on a hot day is to cool off once you've got your suit on before you go through all the lugging of the gear to the water.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.422)
Alright, so we're geared up, got ready to go in the water. Just gonna do a quick gear match.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:31.438)
if we have a Kevin is taking forever man forever sorry Kevin had to go back and get J is real well that's not what slowed you down what? that's not what slowed you down we got back up here at the same time from the water geez come on we gotta go diamond
Hurry up! Producer Dan is going to have to edit this like half an hour of silence out of this. You know what? I'm going to go in. I'll see you down in the cave. I can do this alone. I've done this cave a million times. fuck. Hold on. Because the Lord knows all Daniels.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.102)
Alright so we're all geared up and ready to go. We got things all on and we're going to do a quick gear match, team gear match and check and then we're going to head down to the water and go cape up.
We have a hood, check, and a mask. Check. Right post, is it on? Check. Check. Manifold is open? Check. Check. And last post is on? Check. Check. All right, primary regulator. Nitrox 32? Check. Secondary Nitrox 32? Check. Inflator?
The Dive Table Podcast (00:52.142)
Wind is working. Dry suit.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:57.006)
Open. Primary wheel. Check. Backup light.
The Dive Table Podcast (01:09.07)
Back upright and right. Check.
The Dive Table Podcast (01:14.35)
Okay. Primary light.
Check.
Check. We have a cutting device on the harness. Check. Check.
SPG, pull the gas, 260. 3700. 37. 37, great. Bottom timer, right. Check. Compass, left. Check.
Okay, in my right pocket I have my wet notes, I have 10 rems on a pigtail, I have my spool for making jumps, and on the top pocket I have an extra double ender. On the left side I have my backup mask, I have a safety spool, I have my pigtail we can use for some video shenanigans after. Check. Check. On my right pocket, my pigtail, 8 rems.
The Dive Table Podcast (02:13.648)
The arms is in my zipper pocket. On my left I have a backup cutting device in my zipper pocket as well. Everything else I matched. Left pocket, or right pocket I got a jump spool, wet notes, and 10 rems. In the left pocket I got a backup mask, safety spool, and in the zipper pocket it's the leash. Perfect. Duffins? Duffins check. Nice. That is cool.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:02.574)
Yeah, we just came up from a long dive. Yeah. A very long dive. I think we're all a bit tired, but it was awesome. It was a good dive. 90 minutes or what? 97 minutes or something like that. Plus.
shooting a little bit of video for materials afterwards, plus doing a little bit of drills. Training. Yeah. It's like two and a half hours in the water. Two and a half hours in water time. Yeah. That's nice. Good though. It's nice. Yeah. We made it all the way past the first tee almost to the second tee and saw...
Hardly cave, Ben I think you and I have never seen. No, I've been here only with students. So then you're limited a little bit to their penetration limits. And now we brought tons more gas. Yeah. And so we could go, which was actually nice because the flow was, was quite strong. my gosh. Yeah. Getting in there. It was moving. It was work to get in. Definitely got to work out. Yeah. We get to,
Enjoy a good dinner tonight after that workout.
But I love the view there at the T where you see these columns and it's a huge, it's a really, really wide room in reality with all these columns everywhere. Just imagine how long that must have taken to develop. And there are different columns than like in Mexico where it's slag mite and slag type met. Met, no, no, this is carved out. Yeah, carved out of straight rock. Which is amazing.
The Dive Table Podcast (01:45.296)
I saw tons of fossilized sea urchins laying around. And these spikes, the sea urchin spikes that are all fossilized, they're everywhere.
Amazing. Amazing to see. My favorite part of that dive was the... I finally got to go... I saw it on a setup dive or on an earlier dive, a progressive penetration dive that we did. It's a little bookshelf. It looked like a caveman's bookshelf to me. You know, something like over a pirate's lair at some point when that cave was empty. Because it's just perfectly... Looks like it's cut out of the rock where you would have books and I imagine like a skull and a candle burning. You know, like, you know...
So I got a chance to go see that up close. I saw it from far away on a different dive. So I went and hugged it and saw it really, really close just to see what it was all about. That was a cool thing in that part of the cave. How about you, Kev? What was their highlight? Kind of echoing what Ben said, once we hit that first tee and made the right, it just opens up because prior to that, it's just kind of one big tunnel that flattens it out. You can look left or right and you can see the walls and they don't really go anywhere. But once you get around that first tee, you shine.
your light and it's like a passageway over here or you know a little circle over there tons of stuff that you could just tie into the main line with a little jump reel yeah and start exploring go go left and right and have tons of these little nooks and crannies all over the place that have been taking millions of years to carve into and you're a handful of people who get to go see what's around that corner yeah that's amazing that's so scooter is definitely my gosh yes yes just to put
put it in low speed and just enjoy the scenery without kicking like a horse. What did you say it was something like, well you're in bar, like 50 bar to get one section 15 on the way back. So that's 750 PSI to get to where we, after we dropped the second stage, I used 750 PSI, which was my...
The Dive Table Podcast (03:55.438)
Usable. Yeah, and then coming back I used I think 20 bar which is 300 300 psi. Yeah, just because of the flow. Yeah. Yeah, so less than half on the way out, but I wasn't kicking on the way out I was like flowing fast. Yeah, like I was
Drifting faster than I normally would swim. Yeah. We got our drift diving certifications today. Yeah. Cave drift diver cert. Cave drift diver cert. Cave two stage deco drift diver certification. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It was almost like as you approach those stage bottles is like, we grab it. You got to clip it or you're moving. Like if you can't, you know, I clipped that first clip cause it was locked. Yeah. I figured the back one, if it started to slip, you know, cause.
because we were moving so fast, like let it go on the line so I can get to it. But yeah, it was no joke in terms of getting in there. I was really uncomfortable the first like 10, 15 minutes of that dive. It's hard. Yeah, it's hard struggling getting in there. Also, you're carrying two full 80 cubic feet stages. Yeah. It's weight, right? It's something people don't think about. You can make it neutral underwater, but it doesn't mean you don't have
to carry it. Move it through and move it against that flow. You gotta displace the water that you are not in. If you wanna move your whole body length and width and birth further through the water, you gotta displace that water. That takes energy. So the more you weigh and the more you displace, the harder it gets.
That was hard work getting in that one. At the end, and they're full, at the hardest part of the dive. The beginning push through that smaller area where it flows really, really hard, or it's really, really strong. On the way back, it was super comfy. Yeah, down the chimney and then on top of the first little ledge that what they call breakdown, is where the cave gets narrower from ceiling to bottom.
The Dive Table Podcast (06:09.614)
And that's when the flow is faster, stronger. Yeah. Yeah. Feels like someone's like turning on the spigot. Turning on the spigot or yeah, spraying the hose or you know, the fan, they just turn the fan up, you know, right in those areas. It feels really, really strong. wow. Listen to that. All the, maybe it may this will pick up on the podcast. All the frogs just started as it's sunset right now. So it's going down and they're serenading us in the swamp over there.
We are the only ones here at the park. Beautiful night. We are. We're the only ones here. Us and the big little turkey vultures over there. Yeah, we better call the sheriff's office and let them know we're out again. That's the thing you do here, I guess. Yeah, make sure we let them know we're out and then we'll pack everything up and go home and have some dinner ourselves. See what Thomas made us. Yeah, something. Isn't that a lovely view, Rius? Guys cooking dinner, cooking breakfast, cooking lunch.
All we have to do is eat, dive, eat, and sleep, eat. Pretty good deal. Pretty good deal. Yeah, so we'll catch up with you guys at dinner and hope you're enjoying this so far. But yeah, we're pretty beat. That's just going to be an early night. It was a big dive. So big dive and a lot of fun. Yeah.
The Dive Table Podcast (00:01.358)
Alright, we're leaving the park now and it's unique to this park that we actually get locked into the park. So we have to enter a code, unlock the gate, do the whole thing, drive the truck through, relock the gate, the whole nine yards. It's quite interesting process that you have to do. So we're finally kind of wrapping things up here, opening, closing the gate, letting the truck go through it.
And we had to call the sheriff's department just to let them know that we are out of the cave. So again, really cool, amazing cave, but a unique system. And all of them are different in terms of, there you go, in terms of how access is managed and controlled and all of that. All right. We're gonna head home now and we're gonna get some dinner
The Dive Table Podcast (00:02.478)
All right. We flew through dinner. You ordered two plates of food. No, I didn't. I said I want a small assortment of whatever they can offer. And they deliver two full plates. Two huge plates. So we forgot to record at dinner because we were making fun of Ben, how much he had. But a dive like that will definitely get your appetite going. yeah. So now we're sitting out by the fire pit. It's time for dessert.
And what are you having there Ben? Well, I was teaching a cave week last week, a cave class last week to two absolute rock stars and one of them or both of them actually introduced me to this delicious little dessert called a root beer float. Yes, you've never had one before last week. No, exactly. And it's my favorite thing to mix in a cup by far. So.
So Ben has a root beer float and we're joined on the fire by some of the community here at where we've been staying called the Overhead Environment for the last almost two weeks now. So do you guys want to say hi or skip you? Hello everybody. Hello everybody. So yeah, we're hanging around the fire pit having some dessert. My body is sore.
You're good. And you'll notice one voice is missing. That's Kevin, because Kevin's passed out already in his room. Done. Is he done? Yeah, he's done. He checked out. he's done. Yeah. So it was a big dive. A lot of physical exertion, a lot of bottle carrying, all that. But yeah, we're wrapping up the night. And that's kind of the day. You start the morning. Gear, planning.
planning over breakfast, la la la, the whole nine yards all the way to now where we're enjoying, Ben's enjoying a root beer float. What are you having? I have a little bit of ice cream. There we go, all he needs is root beer. Yeah, with good friends. So that's kind of a day in the life of a cave diving team. And did you have fun today? Me? Yeah.
The Dive Table Podcast (02:19.118)
Do I have to publicly say that? Yeah, you do. okay. Yes, I had fun. And I had a blast as well. I saw some really cool parts of that cave today. Yeah, it was nice to come into that cave you've been really intimate with on courses in the very early parts of the cave, the beginning parts of the cave, and now to finally go a bit further. It was amazing. Yeah, it was beautiful. So yeah, we'll wrap the night up.
around the campfire and then head to bed and do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day after that. Hope you enjoyed a little look into a day in the life of the Cave Diver. And thanks for joining us on the dive table.
Jay (05:14.31)
Well, there you have it. A day in the life of a cave diver or a cave diving team. And I'll tell you, it was a long day, an incredible day, and it turned out to be an incredible dive that went exactly to plan as we had planned it. And just for some context in that dive, we wanted to see some portions of the cave that we hadn't seen. And so we did a much bigger dive. We took two stages with us as well as our back gas, as well as a deco cylinder of O2 at the very end, so that we could really push and see a portion of the cave that we hadn't yet seen. And so I hope you enjoyed kind of the behind the scenes look at our day. And as always, please join us on Facebook or wherever it might be that you connect, send us an email, jay@thedivetable.com.
Jay (07:16.724)
We'd love to hear from you. Love to hear your experiences, whether or not this resonated with you or didn't, or you thought we're crazy or whatever it might be, but I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for taking the time to listen and we'll see you on the next episode of the dive table.
