9/15/13 Blue Springs Orange City
Yesterday Tegg and I went to Blue Springs in Orange City to survey our damaged reaper sign we built and installed about a year and a half ago, which replaced the old vandalized and destroyed sign before that. There's another thread on why we built it like we did, but that's not the point of this report.
The water was up a few feet and seemed clear enough in the run. The spring basin was nice and clear (we were the first team in) and I was happy to see the entire cavern itself was crystal clear. The last few times I went, it was very murky almost to the bottom of the OW area before it cleared. It made for a pleasant dive.
We found the sign base resting on the edge of the smaller front vent at the bottom of the cavern. It seemed secure enough for now, so we're going to leave it there until we come back to pull it out for the actual repair.
I have to say, when we built this new sign, we were able to pick up half the entire structure by the plastic reaper sign itself and it held fine on dry land. It took some extreme redneck-open-water-diver ingenuity to rip the sign off of it's mounting bracket. I know it wasn't rust as there isn't any rust on the remaining brackets, they were made from aluminum. most of the rivets appeared to have been snapped off or cut somehow. We had stainless steel washers holding the sign down to the bracket with a river going through it down both sides of the sign. A few of the washers/rivets were still in place. How they got the sign off, I don't know. I'm guessing just pulling on it enough broke the plastic and that was that.
The 2nd part was the fact they dragged that thing all the way down to the back of the cavern. This is no small feat. It weighs a solid 200-300lbs. It took everything for us to get it down there and in place, and as it sat over the spring vent, I was able to hang onto it's brackets and let the flow pull me completely vertical... it didn't budge. So..the sheer will power of these vandals to drag such a heavy object down to the bottom just amazes me.
We measured the base, found a better spot for it and came up with a better plan to secure it down after the repairs are made.
On our way back up I decided I wanted to check all the nooks and crannies of the cavern out, as I had never actually done that before there. I peeked in all the crevices as Tegg waited on me and found that somehow divers had gotten in and graffitied even the most random and tight of places. We wiped some of it off, but the overwhelming amount of it just couldn't be cleaned up. A side note on that... I know we shouldn't touch cave walls, because things like algae and nature are growing on it, but... what do you do in the case of wanting to rid the cave of graffiti? Wiping a spot of algae off takes care of that, but then you're damaging all the algae in that one spot?
On to the more open water parts...we moved back up slowly and found a HUGE cock-and-balls carved into a very large visible rock front and center at the bottom of the open water area. We also found very deep gouged graffiti (1/4 deep or more in some cases) of names, initials, hearts, and more random crap Just COVERING every inch of the bottom of the open water area.
I've never seen so much graffiti and damage to a cave before. I know when I was only an open water diver we had more to worry about than the walls of a spring so I never paid attention to it really... but now that I take the time to sit back and enjoy the environment I am in, every little thing like this sticks out now like a sore thumb.
Now, on to the divers we encountered...
When you enter this park and sign in, you fill out a waiver. On there it states you may NOT bring lights unless you have a minimum of a cavern cert. It also appears that most of the people that dive here ignore all their training and dive well beyond their limits all in the name of "It's cool!". We stopped at least 5 divers with lights and made them shut them off. We also found 2 other divers just sitting just inside the cavern zone, no lights or anything, just sitting there by their selves. When asked "Where's your buddy?".. they had no idea, and just pointed up. They were then shoo'ed up to go find them. We also saw 2-3 more slip past and go into the really dark upper parts of the cavern...no lights or anything. We went after one and turned him around. The rest we just had to shake our heads at and head back to the surface as our dive was nearing it's end.
While hovering at various depths on the way back up, we were bulldozed, stepped on, shoved out the the way and all kinds of other unpleasantness. I can't recall when I was an OW diver being so un-aware and un-caring of who else was around me enough to just physically shove past someone, or step on them, etc. Many divers were standing straight up on the ledges. I can't really complain about them too much, it is what it is at that site, but it's sad to see they paid a lot of money to get trained at some point and obviously didn't get very good training, or just straight up don't care, one of the two (or both).
All in all, we actually had an enjoyable dive, and had fun. We are planning to go back again to get some more ideas.
