Suwannee County is the #1 cave-diving destination in the world

Janet Schrader, Democrat Reporter

Unknown to most Suwannee County residents, hundreds of visitors descend on the county every year to participate in a dark and dangerous sport. Suwannee County is the number-one destination in the WORLD, yes the world, for cave divers. They haul their specialized gear from everywhere to dive into the dark, narrow cave systems of the Suwannee River.

Suwannee County is the adopted home to many of these divers. They come to dive and many stay because Suwannee County is such a great place to live and has so many opportunities for their passion.

John Orlowsky lives close to Peacock Springs, probably the best cave system in Suwannee County, and now teaches cave diving.

"I started coming down here when I was teaching scuba diving at the University of Pittsburgh," Orlowsky said. "I talked my students into trying it, took a class in cave diving and fell in love with it."

It's hard to imagine what could lure all of these divers into the dark caverns of the county. "It's beautiful and it's challenging," Orlowsky says. He was even married in a cave.

It takes a special kind of person to dive into a dark cave. "Ninety percent is mental and 10 percent physical," Orlowsky said.

Orlowsky has had some close calls in caves, but said he is rarely scared. "Sometimes I get scared," Orlowsky said. "I had some rocks fall on me in a cave in Mexico pinning me to the floor. I was scared then."

Orlowsky said mind games play with you when you're really deep inside a system. That's called the time/stress factor.

"I teach my students to listen to it," Orlowsky said. "As soon as something feels wrong mentally or physically, turn around."

That is Orlowsky's number-one rule in cave diving. Turn around, don't dive if anything feels wrong.

"Call off the dive," Orlowsky said. "The cave isn't going anywhere."

There are other rules. When teaching cave diving, Orlowsky says he stresses safety first. He also teaches divers to care for the cave systems and how not to damage the caves.

There is a lot of special equipment used in cave diving that is not regularly used in open-water diving. Cave divers always use two tanks, always carry three light sources (remember caves are really, really dark), they always use two regulators with a seven-foot long hose on the second one in case the need to share arises. Cave divers always carry three reels of line. Many of Suwannee's caves have permanent guide lines, but every diver ties off to something at the mouth of the cave and reels line out as they go into the system just in case the lights go out. A diver can find his way back to the entrance by following the line. Divers always carry two small knives in case their lines get tangled. Cave divers also wear a wrist-mounted computer. Open water divers sometimes wear one, but Cave divers use this as standard equipment. The computer monitors bottom time, depth, decompression status and the gases being breathed. Technical divers also wear this devise as standard equipment. Technical divers dive in deep water, dive wrecks and use helium mixes.

Orlowsky has taken his passion for cave diving around the world. He's dived caves in France, Mexico Belize, Guatemala, Venezuela and the Caribbean Islands. The deepest and largest caves to be dived are in Mexico. Even though the caves in Suwannee aren't the deepest or the longest, what makes them special are the flows. Suwannee's cave systems offer all types of caves, but because all of Suwannee's caves occur around the river or a spring, water flows into and out of the caves. This flow makes the diving more challenging and offers students of cave diving a chance to learn diving in flowing water.

Orlowsky says the flow makes all the difference and is a major factor in one of cave diving's most dangerous aspects . . . silting. That's when the loose material at the bottom of the cave gets disturbed and surrounds the diver like a cloud. Divers take all kinds of precautions to avoid silting such as swimming with knees bent and flippers up or swimming with tiny little movements of the flippers.

Suwannee has systems where water flows very hard out of the spring making it hard to enter the caves. There are also caves where the water flows in, due to the river. There are no-flow caves and high-flow caves. It all makes diving difficult and interesting.

Because of the danger of cave diving, there are no open-water divers allowed in Suwannee's cave systems. Divers have to take special classes, and that's where Orlowsky comes in, to become certified in cave diving. Even after becoming certified, divers can only enter some caves if they have a certain number of recorded dives to their credit. Peacock Springs, now a state park, has a ranger whochecks all certification before divers are allowed in the system.

There have been many fatalities in cave diving. The most famous cave diver, Sheck Exley, was a math teacher at Suwannee High. Exley died in 1994 trying to descend to 1,000 feet in Zacatan Cave, Mexico. Exley was a pioneer in deep-water diving and in cave diving.

According to Orlowsky, lack of training is the cause of almost every cave diving death in Suwannee County. Orlowsky said, 95 percent of the divers killed in Suwannee County were untrained in cave diving. Orlowsky should know, he's participated in eight body recoveries. "One I pulled out last year was trained in cavern diving, daylight zone," Orlowsky said. "He was in 1,300 feet. His gages showed he'd been in depths of 180 feet. I found him at 50 feet where he'd run out of air. He had a line but he was lost."

In only one instance has Orlowsky gone on a body recovery and found the cave diver alive. In 1991 he got a call from Venezuela. He was taken to a cave system in Venezuela by private Lear jet. He found the diver alive, breathing air in an air pocket after he'd been lost for 36 hours. There are no air pockets in Suwannee County caves. At times, divers have seen air at the top of caves, taken off their regulators and tried to breath the air only to die from breathing poisonous methane gas accumulated at the top of the cave. Cave diving is dangerous.

Look for more articles on cave diving in future issues of the Suwannee Democrat.

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