Mark Long and I dove Whip-poor-will Sink Cave today on John Harper's lot for sale. Very silty, no flow, 15ft vis. Looks to us like a large cavern was mostly filled over the eons by surface debris to create a “cone within a sphere.” The remaining unfilled rock void is thus a tall, narrow, inward-curving semi-circular cave.
With the entrance coming into the side of the top of the room, I can see how Cindy thought it might have been an offset pit below a small entrance sinkhole - John drew us an entirely different, third picture of the cave! LOL I am reminded of the story of the 12 blind men trying to describe an elephant from only parts of the pachyderm’s person. This cave needs to be mapped.
This “cone within a sphere” cave type is common in FL and quite familiar to dry cavers. Cone-sphere caves often have side passages, too, and hopefully there’s one there that goes... Although we saw no such side passages, we were in the water only a short time and saw but a small portion of the cave.
John dove the cave 7 times in the mid-1980s when he bought it, then he got more interested in other dive sites, and then he quit cave diving until recently.
We saw no troglobites or fish, but there is a layer of biofilm covering the cave surfaces. There are some really cool looking rows of "snottites," or their underwater equivalent, underneath ceiling ledges immediately after entering the main cave. I also saw a couple of mineral (saline?) seeps.
As the chairman of the NSS Nature Preserves Committee, I did this "work" today in order to start trying to ascertain whether this cave should be under ownership and/or management by cave divers. The site needs more such “work,” especially mapping. John is eager to sell the property and therefore quite willing to allow buyers to dive the cave (if certified + sign waiver). John is talkative and has a bunch of old stories about the original US cave divers that you can otherwise only read about today.
He also has a LOT OF OLD GEAR, CINDY!
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