Cave Diving - Florida

If the whole diving thing began in a round about way so did the cave diving. About the best thing that ever came out of BSAC Diver magazine was a write up on fresh water spring diving in Ginnie Springs Florida. Getting fed up of diving in cold coffee coloured English Channel (OK it's not always coffee coloured) it was off to do some dives in the "air clear" water of the spring. During planning the holiday this "just let's dive in clear water" became a trip to take cavern course, after all if you are in the spring why not have a look in the cavern. Just by chance, being booked in at Ginnie Springs, Jarrod Jablonski (JJ) one of their resident instructors was allocated as our instructor for this course. This was perhaps the trigger to the most fundamental chage in the progress of the advancement of the sport. On his suggestion, the cavern course became, "stay on and really go into the cave rather than being held back just at the entrance" hence taking the intro cave course. The following year this became apprentice cave, then next the series was completed with not only full cave but also trimix. All of which were at the hands of JJ. During this time many a conversation was held regarding diver training in general and led to frequent discussions about setting up a new agency. out of ths JJ set up GUE and it was via this route and the friendship that initially DIR (Doing It Right) and finally GUE made it's way over to the UK. The fact that our car has the registraion D1 RUK (DIR UK) for the uk virtual club leaves no more to say.....

Remember - cave diving is dangerous so do not try this without first taking cave specific scuba diving lessons.

For excellent training see GUE based in High Springs close to Ginnie.

Now these caves in Florida are big, where a restriction is one where you can drive a truck through, and the water (most of the time) is crystal clear. See the following pages for photos of the area, write ups and profiles of dives carried out in these caves.