manatee anyone?

[IowaCaveDiver]

am hoping to dive manatee next weekend.... swimming it and it has been awhile but wanted to take advantage of the reduced flow i've been hearing about. Anyone dove it since we've had all this rain the last few weeks? anyone diving it this weekend? Just curious about the conditions....

Matt

[Superlyte27]

I dove it over the weekend. The vis is the best I can remember. It's easily 70+ the entire way. Past Friedman's I'm guessing it's 100+. Not sure flow is down. Depending on tides, it's kicking pretty good. Awesome dives though.

[IowaCaveDiver]

wow, i never knew this cave was tidally influenced... it has been at least 3-4 years since i dove it and I had an SS back then... now just swimming and am taking some buddies who have never been and are also swimming. We really only want to dive it if we won't get our butts handed to us.

[CrawDaddy]

wow, i never knew this cave was tidally influenced... it has been at least 3-4 years since i dove it and I had an SS back then... now just swimming and am taking some buddies who have never been and are also swimming. We really only want to dive it if we won't get our butts handed to us.

I just dove it today. At high tide the flow is non-existent. Absolutely zero water movement. At low tide it does pick up, but not much. At low tide we still managed to swim from Catfish to Friedman's in under 21 minutes. If you had tried swimming Manatee 5 years ago, you'd have been hard pressed to get to Sue's. Its a sad state that our aquifer is in when Manatee is like this, but as for your dive, I think you'll be fine. Visibility is 70+ but the water has a greyish tinge to it, not visible particulate. More like haze.

[IowaCaveDiver]

sounds great... my buddies will be excited to drive down for next weekend! Are they still limiting 6 divers at a time in the system? any changes at manatee i need to prepare for? we will probably just start at catfish and go up stream for our dive.

[CrawDaddy]

sounds great... my buddies will be excited to drive down for next weekend! Are they still limiting 6 divers at a time in the system? any changes at manatee i need to prepare for? we will probably just start at catfish and go up stream for our dive.

I don't think so. We asked about the diver quota and the rangers seemed confused by the rules. 30 divers total, unlimted cave divers. Not sure if that means all 30 can be cavers, or if 30 openwaters and no limit to cave divers. Ranger didnt seem to know how to answer that. Go figure. No real changes in the park tho. Have a great dive. Lemme know how it goes.

[stairman]

I was curious at how much deco gets racked up on a swim to Friedmans from CF and back.

[CrawDaddy]

I was curious at how much deco gets racked up on a swim to Friedmans from CF and back.

Thats going to depend on what mix you are breathing. On EAN 32 we racked up zero. Manatee is a very large tunnel with lots of vertical relief, so if you hug the line you can avg mid 70s to 80ft depth for the dive. If you hug the ceiling, you average mid 60s. That makes a difference also. If you run the cave on air, you might see 5 or 10 min deco. Not much.

[stairman]

Thanks! I only breathe 32. Looking at maps it looked like it ran close to 100 ft which is why I asked. Ive only been upstream a short distance when the flow was rippin. But a nice ride to Manatee afterwards. Swimmers looked at us like we just arrived from Mars and I overheard a woman sayin" those guys are crazy".

[CrawDaddy]

Swimmers looked at us like we just arrived from Mars and I overheard a woman sayin" those guys are crazy".

If I had a penny for every time I've heard that.....

Some sections are around 100, but like I mentioned, theres a lot of vertical room to play with.