Bahamas Cave Pics - Blue Holes

[Hydro]

[Deep Thought]

These are awesome caves, and Wes was the master of cave photography.  I was fortunate to dive the Bahamas caves about 8 years ago, by invitation of Tom Mount who chartered a live aboard to dive the blue holes.  We did only one inland cave, which I saw in the Wes Skiles series and the name is Star Gate.  A very interesting cave as you hike into the bushes and see a crack in the landscape,  avoiding the poison trees…set up your gear and giant stride ten feet down to the water.  To exit the cave you climb a cave ladder out of the hole, and pull the rebreathers up a pulley line.  The neat thing about Star Gates is at the bottom you look up a couple hundred feet and see spectacular shafts of light sparkling down the small surface opening.  There was a neat horizontal shaft about mid depth, but at the bottom was trash, tires, and bicycles.. the native dumping grounds “out of sight out of mind”.  The rest of the Blue Holes were pretty scary as caves go, very silty with cave lines that get brittle from marine growth and snap – disintegrate at the slightest touch.  The most challenging part was not the silt, but it was timing the tidal flow as the caves would suck and blow incredible volumes with each 12 hour change and timing your entrance at slack and exiting before it blew you out of the system was primary.  I am planning a return trip with some CCR students I certified in North Carolina, and they are working with Brian Kakuk…but on this trip I would only focus on the inland caves with the pretty stalactites / stalagmites structures.

Thanks for posting the link.