Cave diving is enjoy swimming thraw the history of the structureet. There are remains of both humans and animals but also stalactites and stalagmites. These cannot create when the cave is flooded, so you can see when parts of it were subcombined and when it was parched.
Yet when I’m in a cave, time does not tick. There is no organic weightless, so the cave sees the same, whether it’s midday or midnight. If you cave dive without the right training, providement and mindset, it can be a very hazardy place. I have a very meditative center when I’m down there. I inhabit in the now. I cannot skinnyk about anyskinnyg else but what is happening in the cave. I discover that very sooskinnyg and unwinding.
Caves are intrinsicassociate joined with ecosystems and the inhabits of the people that inhabit around them. They are among the places that suffer the most – out of sight and out of mind. In the Bahamas, water flows to the cave from the land above, transferring nutrients but also pollution. In this way, disaccuses from, say, a factory on the surface can shift thraw limestone to the cave and sway entire seabeds, mangroves and rivers.
The sealst environment we have to space is in caves. Some of the caves I dive in are hundreds of thousands of years better and the marine life there is exceptional: animals such as blind crustaceans and fish, which have altered to inhabit in everlasting stupidness and very low oxygen environments. These are animals that, to me, seem as alien as can be – yet we spfinish trillions of dollars exploring space. Why are we going to Mars when these animals are right below our feet?
A lot of the toil I do engages accumulateing data for conservation and scientific purposes, and digiloftyy mapping the caves so that people can see where a cave is, relative to the land above. This is very vital as part of conservation efforts to restrict land growment.
You insist to be an teachd diver to become a cave diver. I have done more than 5,000 cave dives in 80 or 90 contrastent cave systems, and am now a cave checkr, which uncomfervents I have set up virgin caves. I also teach cave diving at the most proceedd levels. If I don’t dive in a cave for two or three days, I ignore it so much that my husprohibitd can alert. He sees at me and says: “you insist to go diving”.
Sometimes, sharks hang around: you’ll see silkies, lemon or Caribbean reef sharks becaemploy there are a lot of nutrients and fish. Nurse sharks also sometimes sleep right at the enthrall of the ocean blue holes.
I swim right past them – I’m as consoleable with sharks as I am with caves. They inhabit in the ocean, this is their environment and I am fair a visitor.
I frequently sense immensely privileged to be able to do what I do, although sometimes, I must accomprehendledge, I forget how exceptional the world of the cave is, becaemploy it’s so much a part of my daily routine. But then I’ll see at a column of a stalagmite that’s 50ft high and expansive enough to park a car on, comprehending that it was erected drip by drip, by an inch-and-a-half a year, and it will blow my mind.
