Letter to help prevent recreational diving @ Wakulla Springs State Park

[Puttzer]

Date

Secretary Herschel Vinyard
Department of Environmental Protection
3900 Commonwealth Blvd MS 10
Tallahassee, Florida 32399
Herschel.Vinyard@dep.state.fl.us

Re: Scuba Diving at Wakulla State Park

Dear Sec. Vinyard,
...

Just another thought: cave divers are organized and frequently clean in the springs where swimmers see but unthinkingly toss trash.

Who else but divers can keep the underwater part clean?

[Sludge]

Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park and Blue Spring State Park successfully allow
recreational scuba activities.

... as well as Madison Blue Spring State Park.

[Kelly Jessop]

... as well as Madison Blue Spring State Park.

...or they did until the budget cuts ;-(

[LiteHedded]

Honestly, I wouldn't focus toooo much on changing rules at open sites. For now, all you need is trimix and a few reasonable dives. I mean really, if you've been below 150, how can you not have 45min deco unless you're bounce diving?

We've got several government owned sites that need attention:
-Rose Sink
-Edwards
-M2
-Sullivan Sink
-Gopher Sink (owned by a hunt club, but I think could be opened with some work)
-Sally Ward
-Promise / Go Between (would mainly want to use the access roads from the leon sinks preserve)
-Apopka Blue
-Oleno
-Wekiva Springs
-Rock Springs

Just my $0.02 of course, but there's so much cave that's inaccessible to the public that I wouldn't start complaining about the rules at Emerald.


Thinking back over the last year, have we even had an average of 1/2 a death per year at each site? Considering the low number of divers qualified to dive Wakulla, how infrequently visibility would support diving, and the fact that it's in an area where very few other caves are open (or at least the general public isn't aware they are), I just don't see it being dove all that often to even come close to Ginnie or Peacock like numbers.

I think rock springs is privately owned, if you mean the one in apopka

[jj1987]

I think rock springs is privately owned, if you mean the one in apopka

I think Orange Co. owns it. I think it'd be more fun tubing there if it were private, for obvious reasons.

[aw]

A true economic study involves more than the narrow look into "what an action will do for my wallet in "X" county." That's a very selfish perspective. True economics looks to maximize the utilization of a scarce resource with a good conscious effort to gain the maximium benefit to the most stakeholder groups, while preserving the said resource from abuse at the same time. It's a balancing act. But this can rarely be achieved through a mutually exclusive "this or that" mentality. Any manager who has been given the privilege of managing a resource on behalf of others must look at all the variables with the understanding that moral obligations to enhance the enjoyment of society with that resource may or may not always be reflected in monetary gain. A "boat operator" is a "boat operator" and not the manager of the property for this very reason.

Wakulla is not a fully-utilized resource. Yes, the boats use the surface of the water. But there is an entire underwater world that largely sits unused. It's like an entire museum waiting to be enjoyed, but this particular museum has no business hours. Yet, there's an entire stakeholder group waiting eagerly to visit. Wakulla represents the mammoth of cave dives to make. Even the open water portion would be worth the trip. As an analogy, how assinine would it be to prohibit people from living directly under the flight paths of airplanes just because there are planes in the sky (in case they have to make an emergency landing or happen to crash)? Yet, that's what this boat thing is comparable to.

I think there's a way to do this where everyone wins, to the exclusion of none (Just as Kelly, FW, and others have said). Hell, if they open Wakulla, I just may come back from cave diving retirement and hit that one a time or two myself.

[Benderr]

A true economic study involves more than the narrow look into "what an action will do for my wallet in "X" county." That's a very selfish perspective. True economics looks to maximize the utilization of a scarce resource with a good conscious effort to gain the maximium benefit to the most stakeholder groups, while preserving the said resource from abuse at the same time. It's a balancing act. But this can rarely be achieved through a mutually exclusive "this or that" mentality. Any manager who has been given the privilege of managing a resource on behalf of others must look at all the variables with the understanding that moral obligations to enhance the enjoyment of society with that resource may or may not always be reflected in monetary gain. A "boat operator" is a "boat operator" and not the manager of the property for this very reason.

Wakulla is not a fully-utilized resource. Yes, the boats use the surface of the water. But there is an entire underwater world that largely sits unused. It's like an entire museum waiting to be enjoyed, but this particular museum has no business hours. Yet, there's an entire stakeholder group waiting eagerly to visit. Wakulla represents the mammoth of cave dives to make. Even the open water portion would be worth the trip. As an analogy, how assinine would it be to prohibit people from living directly under the flight paths of airplanes just because there are planes in the sky (in case they have to make an emergency landing or happen to crash)? Yet, that's what this boat thing is comparable to.

I think there's a way to do this where everyone wins, to the exclusion of none (Just as Kelly, FW, and others have said). Hell, if they open Wakulla, I just may come back from cave diving retirement and hit that one a time or two myself.

The airplane analogy crossed my mind as well.

Please be aware that it's not just a boat operator that is making these points to Sec. Vinyard. The former director of this park has made those same points, in writing, to Sec. Vinyard. She, and others in her group are trying to drum up support for an anti-dive campaign.

With other parks possibly closing, it's more important than ever to push for our fair and equal access at Wakulla (which isn't currently on the chopping block). Please send your letters in today.

Thanks

[sskasser]

Any ideas why the former director is anti-diving? I see (though don't agree with) the boat operator's point of view, but would like to understand others' reasoning.

[Benderr]

Any ideas why the former director is anti-diving? I see (though don't agree with) the boat operator's point of view, but would like to understand others' reasoning.

I don't know the woman personally, but she has a clear bias against divers. I suspect that a certain group has fed her misleading information about scuba diving, and specifically, cave diving. This group profits from Wakulla being closed to the diving public. No, I won't name names, publicly or privately. This is my opinion only.

But she doesn't get a free ride from that, because she claims that Cherokee Sink is open to divers, and I find it very, very difficult to believe that she doesn't know it's been closed since Summer 2009 to all swimming and diving. She has an interest herself in keeping it closed, but I can't say what that is, and it really doesn't matter. I suspect she likes things the way they are, and is resistant to change, like lots of folks.

There is an attachment that went with that letter, and she mentions that it was fortunate in the past, that divers had been injured during slow park periods because the air ambulances would have disrupted park activities otherwise.... I'm paraphrasing, but not embellishing.....

[Benderr]

Could I ask that members of other cave-diving forums (like NSS-CDS for example) help spread the word? I'm not a mamber, and don't want to join a new forum just to spam it with a pet project. Please direct folks from other forums to this thread or to the facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/home.php?...854052655&ap=1

It's really important that we get as many divers as we can involved in the letter writing. We want to keep pushing while we have momentum.

Thanks