Projects > Gourneyras 2003 (June)
Survey
Latest update: March 18, 2004
Nice view of the river Vis and the landscape where the Gourneyras can be found. It's always a pleasure to spend 3 days there, in the middle of nowhere.
The objective of this dive was to survey as far as possible from the entrance, with a max depth of 70 m. So Brus and I suited up just when Michael and Reinhard stepped in the water, around 7:30 in the morning. And just as Michael and Reinhard disappeared underwater we got to our rebreather tables and started to put on our gear. We took 2 scooters each and one 21 m stage bottle with 50/25 trimix. The support guys had placed for us a 36 m stage with 35/30 trimix and our deep stage that contained 17/60 gas.
When we reached the 21 m stop we deposited our 21 m stages and picked up and connected our RB80 to the deep stage. It was 9 min into the dive when we hit the trigger at 45 m, where the roughly horizontal part of the cave starts. We had a good 20 meters of visibility, so we could see all walls, the ceiling and the floor. You need very good visibility to see all this since this cave is really big. In places you could fly a 737 plane through this. The walls are white, so light gets very well reflected. The sight is really impressive.
On a previous expedition we had already surveyed the descent to 45 m and the first 80 meters after that. So I started the survey where I ended it last time. I was really happy to get some long shots. The longest one was 123 meters. Surveying gets very efficient when you can do this. On the way in I did not really take the time to enjoy the beauty of the cave since I was focused on the job and on my buddy.
Brus getting ready for the survey dive with Hervé. Wido helping.
At one point while descending from 40 m to 51 m I delayed equalizing my ears until the next survey station that was only 10 meters away from me when my right ear blew. I just went straight to that rock, my next survey station and focused my eyes on one fixed point of reference in case I was going to experience some vertigo. No vertigo. I equalized my ears, wrote down the distance and azimuth in my Wetnotes, looked at my bottom timer and wrote that number in the Wetnotes too. Then I took a few seconds to check how I felt and check my ears. One ear had equalized without any problem. The other made a whistling noise when I did the Valsalva maneuver and felt like it would never finish to equalize. It did not hurt and I did not feel dizzy so we pressed on.
We reached 650 meters when I had 50 minutes total time in the water on my bottom timer. At that point Brus told me that he felt cold and would like to turn the dive. Since there was not leak in his dry suit it is probably because he had very little to eat for breakfast whereas I had a double portion of pasta. And also since he had less to do than me during this dive, he was more receptive to cold. Anyway, I placed an arrow on the line to mark the end of the survey and Brus placed a light stick there to make sure that Michael and Reinhard would not miss this point if they had time to do the survey on the way back.
While Brus and Hervé are getting ready, Reinhard is at 45 m putting on the equipment placed there the day before by the support team.
It took us 18 minutes to scooter back to the cavern zone at 45 meters. On the way back I was less busy so could enjoy the beauty of the cave. There are places where the ceiling disappears into a chimney that goes so high up that you cannot see the end with an HID 18W. The size of this cave is comparable to Wakulla. Except the walls are white, it averages only 50-55 m depth for the first kilometer and unlike Wakulla, it would be hard to silt it out.
The decompression went very smoothly. Since we only did 60 minutes of bottom time we were out of the water after 3 hours in there. The support guys came to check on us several times and brought out our scooters and 2 stages. When we were doing our 30 min stop at 6 meters we saw the lights of Michael and Reinhard and I thought: "shit, something went wrong". A moment later a support team was on its way down to meet them.
The long ascent from 6 m to the surface was painful for my right ear. The doctor said that the eardrum was not damaged so it was the inner ear. It seems that my nose was not totally clear before the dive, but it was not significant enough for me to notice it. So, next time I will take better care of my ears underwater.