Jackson Blue

[RN]

We were in Marianna for a long weekend to set up our new house. We bought it in June to use as a transitionary home for our move to the area and decided to turn it into a vacation rental in the meantime. Well, we forced ourselves to take a break from setting up the house for a few hours each day so we could go dive. After all, we bought the house so we could be in the area to dive! We were able to see a lot more of JB than we've been able in the 2 short trips we'd taken there previously. I think this trip started out with our 5th dive in JB. Maybe during the previous 4 dives we were too busy looking up and around or maybe it wasn't there. But we were really disappointed on this trip to see so much destruction in the first 400'. We couldn't believe the amount of gouges and scrapes we saw in the sandy floor. And the first jump to the right is just littered with them. And then we saw a huge scooter gouge about 700' back. There's no excuse for any of this. The flow in JB has decreased quite a bit in our 3 visits there. There aren't many pull points where the destruction is, but there are points. And even if you can't find them, it's not that hard to kick through the flow right now.

Jackson Blue is a really beautiful cave, but it's getting abused. I've seen single tank divers back a couple hundred feet in there before. I don't think the destruction I've seen was caused by them, though. It's in the 90' section and too far back for a single tank diver to get to. I'm sure the guilty parties don't belong to this forum, so this posting might not do anything to change things. I guess I'm just venting because it's really frustrating to see this.

we were really disappointed on this trip to see so much destruction

Once you get past Stage Rock at 2500', don't look down.

[RN]

Once you get past Stage Rock at 2500', don't look down.

I'll try to remember that. We still have a lot of cave to explore before we start staging it back there, and we're not diving scooters yet.