Peacock Springs Cave Diving

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Peacock Springs is a Florida State Park has two major springs, a spring run, and six sinkholes – all in near pristine condition. The springs and sinkholes are openings into the limestone karst and lead to one of the longest underwater cave systems in the continental United States. Approximately 28,000 feet of underwater passages have been explored and surveyed by cave divers. As of June 13, 2008, the Peacock cave system was the 24th longest underwater cave in the world.

The Peacock Springs Cave system was first explored by Vasco Murray in 1956. The first map of the system was completed by a group from the NSS lead by Sheck Exley, in 1995. Exley’s team made over 521 dives to complete the survey. The system was resurveyed in 1996 by a team led by Michael Poucher.

We started our dive from Orange Grove sink, which is generally covered in Duckweed and algae blooms, so the visibility there can vary. There is a large cavern starts that at about 40 feet and extends down to 110 feet. From there, we proceeded along the mainline towards Challenge and Olsen sink, where we turned the dive and proceeded to return to Orange Grove sink.

GUE DPV1

The user of a Scooter or DPV brings three main benefits to our diving – increased speed, improved manoeuvrability and lower gas consumption. DPVs add another dimension to our diving and potentially allows us to to do dives that we would not normally be able to do allowing us to,

• Cover a larger area in a dive, potentially seeing multiple sites
• Travel further on a shore dive, extending a previous dive site
• Simply enjoy the fun of the DPV, doing loops, barrel rolls etc.

The DPV1 course has been designed for students that have no prior experience with a DPV – perfect for anyone looking to learn a bit more about this fun tool! The course is designed to introduce divers to the use of underwater propulsion vehicles and covers:

• Set-up and Maintenance of a DPV
• Buoyancy and Trim
• Basic travel
• Turning
• Emergency stops
• Valve drills and S-Drills with the DPV
• Surface Marker use
• Emergency/Contingency measures
• Gas & DPV Power planning and management

The DPV1 course has been designed for students that have no prior experience with a DPV – perfect for anyone looking to learn about the benefits and potential hazards of this fun tool! For divers that have a reasonable amount of experience using a DPV and already have the basic skills in place, the course is a great refresher, with the dive planning aspects potentially being particularly useful.

The course is run over three days and any tow-behind DPV can be used including the following:

• Gavin
• X-Scooter
• Silent Submersion
• Zuexo

You can read more about the course in the GUE DPV1 Course Standards or contact me for further information and course scheduling. DPV1 is a great course and a lot of fun!