Manatee 1/1/19

My wife and I dove Manatee on New Year's Day. The flow, which people said had been pretty far down last week, was back up - at least, to where getting into the upstream entrance from Catfish required pulling, and getting beyond the tie-in required steady, deliberate finning. We went a little ways, then-- my wife being a 5'-er with a preference for low flow caves-- turned the dive.

For what it's worth, some other teams who were there-- most had scooters-- said that the flow was less than normal. Maybe so, but that sort of observation is probably easier to make with a happy face if you're riding behind a scooter.

Thanks for the update How was the visibility?


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How early did you get there and do ou know if they started turning people away? We always want to dive there and use it for ow skills practice/rb work but we dread the thought of a 2 hour drive just to get turned away.

We arrived on 1/1 around 10 am. We were the fifth team in. To the best of my knowledge, no one was turned away. After saying that the park wasn't turning people away, one of the park volunteers, I think, said that some diver(s) had been turned away one day at 2 pm. But that's pretty late for a dive.

Visibility was quite good, for the short stretch of the cave we dove. Some particulate in the water; otherwise, quite clear.

Today, another diver who'd dived Manatee on 1/1 agreed that the flow was low ... for Manatee. She said that different sections simply flowed harder than others, and the need to use walls to pull and glide made the cave harder to manage. So, maybe my expectations were too great. We were at Manatee some years ago, during spring floods, when there was almost no flow at all in the system. And I certainly could kick against the flow--though I had to keep up a constant kick. Asking my wife to do that as well, however, was another matter.

Remember Manatee is tidally influenced, so the flow rate changes twice a day. The overall flow changes with the river level.