Curiosity question

Last night I watched a program on OLN about cave diving in the Yuccatan. The program was about the cave systems explored by Mike Madden, Lara Popyack and a guy by the last name of Zinczenko.

Several oof the video clips from inside the cave showed a canister clipped off to the line that had been laid. Can someone tell me what those canisters would be and what they are for?

The show kind of made me want to do some cave diving--truly beautiful video.

I sure wish I had seen the show. I always miss stuff like that. Are you sure they weren't tanks on the line?

May also have been battery cans for video lights but without seeing it's hard to say. Takes lots of lighting to get good video or stills in a cave.

I don't know for sure but I think were for capturing specimens. They talked about dif research on the species that were found in the caves.

Didn't MHK appear on a TV show about the same cave systems. I wonder if he met Mike Madden and could provided some insite on what they were for.

that they were for collecting specimens of the creatures living inthe cave systems.

Mike they were about the size of a battery canister used by cave divers. There were no wires coming out of them though.

As for light in the cave---they lit the cave with 40,000 watts of power. Mike Madden commented that when they first turned on all those lights it was awesome to be able to get a true sense of how big this room was that they were in. If I recall correctly one room was 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide.

Also they did a descent into what is now known as the Blue Abyss. Its over 7,000 feet back in the cave and from the point you get to it and then descend to the bottom is 240 feet. All that was very cool but I didn't, and wouldn't, care for the passage through a 500 foot restriction that is very hard to get through just to get to the blue abyss.

There was a toll free number to call to get the video tape of the program. One might be able to track it down through OLN if you could find some way to contact them.

Yeah, Nahoch is a beautiful dive. Some of the biggest rooms I have ever seen in my life. The Blue Abyss is awesome. You scooter for 8000~9000 feet then squirm through this restriction and the floor just drops away into nothingness. It deserves the name, because the cave is completely white and with your lights it makes it look totally blue because it is so big and the water is so clear. Still not as big as "The Pit" in the nearby system of Dos Ojos which is 390 feet deep and 10,000 feet of scootering to get to the drop and another 3200 feet of penetration beyond that. There is so much unexplored cave in these two systems it's totally unbelievable. I didn't catch the show but it sounds like it was interesting. I know that there have been a lot of water sample collections taken and rare species found in no other systems outside of the Yucatan.

SLJ

as soon as you folks that are diving this system can get the really narrow restrictions opened up I'm willing to take cave classes and then check this place out. I prefer the restrictions to be at least 6 feet by 6 feet

I don't think that they put the canister to collect specimens. Life in any cave, doesn't matter which one, doesn't need light...
Maybe they use them like we use tanks in a line...

bye bye :mean:

jbd:

Last night I watched a program on OLN about cave diving in the Yucatan. The program was about the cave systems explored by Mike Madden, Lara Popyack and a guy by the last name of Zinczenko.

Several of the video clips from inside the cave showed a canister clipped off to the line that had been laid. Can someone tell me what those canisters would be and what they are for?

The show kind of made me want to do some cave diving--truly beautiful video.

Click to expand...

I came across this old thread while looking for some other information.

Maybe what was seen as canisters were the Styrofoam cups (each one had it's one marking) that the explorers used to mark stations for helping to draw the map. Mike wanted a really accurate map so they videoed the passage ways and when the guys drawing the map were watching the video for backup information they could reference the Styrofoam cups and see what the passage detail was like.

Dennis