Marsh Harbour, Abaco, Bahamas trip report
I’ve been to Akumal no less than six times, and although I would never take anything away from the caves there, I needed something different.
So there I was one night in front of the computer just a bit on the board side when I started wondering how much it would cost me to get a flight from Jacksonville (JAX) to Marsh Harbour (MHH) on Abaco in the Bahamas.
Brian Kakuk, owner/operator of Bahamas Underground, (www.bahamasunderground.com) and I have talked on and off about getting me out there for some cave diving, let’s see…Orbitz, Travelocity, Cheaptickets…Okay not too bad, American has flights from JAX to MHH that looks reasonable. Next, email Brian and see if dates can be worked out, back to American Airlines website, hit the purchase button. Saaweet! I’m leaving in two weeks! That was easy!
Brian can help you with contacts for accommodations and he provides ground transportation to and from the airport as well as to and from your villa & the dive site each day. There are several nice restaurants within walking distance of your villa or he can get you to a grocery store so you can prepare your own meals at your place of stay. At the end of the day, he will unload, break down and rinse off all of your gear and hang it to dry overnight as part of his guide package.
He’s got a 21ft Carolina Skiff with a 150hp outboard for ocean cave diving and all the ocean dives are in a very protected area (from the wind) so there is never any real waves, maybe a heavy chop at the most.
Doubles, stage bottles, O2 bottles and side mount tanks are available for rent. There is a compressor, nitrox & oxygen at his dive shop as well.
Brian teaches cavern through full cave including sidemount cave, he wrote the IANTD sidemount/no mount training manual & teaches technical diving including CCR and has two Megladons.
For my adventure, I opted for one dive per day although two dives per day is easily done.
Dive #1, Iron Cay West (Ocean cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 69 min.
Total Run Time: 73min.
Max. Depth: 80’
Bottom Temp.:71*
First dive was off Brian’s boat into an ocean blue hole cave. The walls and ceiling are covered with soft corals and sponges, fish, shrimps and starfish are also in the cave. The #36 line is, completely encrusted with sponges and soft corals that can sting so thin reef gloves are recommended for the ocean caves. This cave required sidemount gear and we in fact did encounter a couple tight squeezes but no gear had to be removed, until we came to a no-mount hole. My hoses weren’t lying the way I wanted so I was a little frustrated and looking at my remaining gas, exiting in a siphon, I chose not to take off both tanks and push through only to have to turn the dive a few minutes later and do it all again to get out so I thumbed it. Gives me a reason to go back! I want to see what’s on the other side of that restriction. This was a fun dive, different from any caves I have dove before. During deco we poked around in the basin and saw a green Moray, squirrel fish, lots of shrimps and of all things a Red Lionfish. Apparently they have gotten a foothold in the Atlantic from the Bahamas all the way up to North Carolina.
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Dive #2, Dan’s Cave (Inland cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 63 min.
Total Run Time: 80min.
Max. Depth: 125’
Bottom Temp.:74*
Second dive was an inland cave. This was more like the caves in Akumal, Mexico only I thought better. The majority of the speleothems were white crystal rather than rock. Lots of tall small diameter crystal columns, wedding cake formations and curtain or bacon strip formations with multicolored bands running through. Very highly decorated. The route Brian took me on was better suited for sidemount but there are other routes where back mount is easily doable. Several Isopods, Remapedes and other bugs were seen. There is a lot of cave and several dives could be made here.
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Dive #3, Starfish 2 ~ AKA: Mike’s Grubn’ Hole (Ocean cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 40 min.
Total Run Time: 43min.
Max. Depth: 72’
Bottom Temp.:68*
The idea here was to try and lay some line. Brian had marked the hole with a GPS awhile ago but there are so many blue holes that it’s difficult to keep up with all of them. Nobody, to the best of his knowledge, has ever dove this before so it turned out to be my lucky day, or so I thought. We pushed two different passages, very tight and my skill at doing wraps on the fly needs some work! It was difficult for me to stay ahead of the silt we were kicking up. Being another siphon situation, everytime I slowed down to do a wrap or tie, the vis went to zero and I had to wait for it to clear a bit before continuing on. I decided I didn’t have the knack for it and would have to practice somewhere else and come back so I thumbed it. Anytime I walk away from a dive where I learn something I’m happy. This was for sure a learning experience, I was pretty happy.
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Dive #4, Ralph’s Cave (Inland cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 78 min.
Total Run Time: 88min.
Max. Depth: 80’
Bottom Temp.:75*
Okay, this has to be, hands down, THE most decorated cave I have ever seen, definitely sidemount with absolute buoyancy control. Crystal white columns & mounds. We put a light up against some of these mounds and they light up like some eerie Halloween decoration. Shallow pools with crystal flowers in the bottom. The floor in some spots is nothing but a giant sheet of crystal with a couple of embedded fossilized bats. One room was filled with almost clear stalactites and stalagmites that it looked like some sort of ice storm. I saw bacon strips that were white and some that were clear as glass. Probably the most amazing thing were these crystal stalactites, maybe they were more like soda straws, about the diameter of your pinky finger hanging from the ceiling a couple feet long with inverted crystal flowers at the end. I’m hoping Brian will get back in there and get some pictures of some of this stuff he can post to share with us.
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Dive #5 Dan’s Cave (Inland cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 60 min.
Total Run Time: 80min.
Max. Depth: 148’
Bottom Temp.:74*
Second dive in Dan’s cave. Took a different route, rather than the highly decorated area I was in two day prior, this was more breakdown and deeper, very nice. Huge rooms with white walls, really lights up with a couple of HID lights. I’m one of those guys that enjoys breakdown as much as speleo type formations so I had a great dive here and would do this cave a third, fourth, who knows how many times. There were areas that when the cave was dry, the mud floor dried out and has deep cracks, like you would see in a farm field after a long period of severe drought, pretty damn cool.
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Dive #6, Lost Reel (Inland cave)
Back Gas: Air
Deco Gas: 100%
Bottom Time: 54 min.
Total Run Time: 76min.
Max. Depth: 144’
Bottom Temp.:76*
Last day, last dive. Lost Reel cave is more like the caves you would expect in Akumal, highly decorated but the decorations look more like rock rather than crystal. Very nice cave to end the trip. The one thing that stands out the most with this cave was the bugs.
Isopods and Remapedes of course but the stranges little bug I have ever seen. Brian told me they are very rare and in fact they thought they only existed in one other cave. He called it a Speaonabalia, swimming around in the water column, white of course but it looked like a tiny lima bean, opened with some sort of crustacean in side.
I had a great experience on this trip and I hope to go back next year for another week of spectacular cave diving.
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