I took my camera down while snorkelling this time, and I managed to take some better pictures this time. Some trivia: in aquatic lingo, a cavern system is a cave system that contains native life and a cave system is/are cave/caves that doesn't contain life. Blue springs is both a cavern and cave system. It's considered a cavern to at least 90 feet down, past that... the spring probably starts to turn into a cave system. So without much more delay, picture time!
The water was the best I've seen. Very few people were around to disturb the silt and sand.
The sign at 60 feet.
Underwater pictures with snorkels NEVER turn out right. This was a bear to position properly. By swimming down then facing up, I go too high for a nice picture. After 10 seconds of twisting, I just give up, swim down with my back down, hit the sign, allow time for floating up, and snap! Oooo. Red chest hair.
There were two other freedivers diving, and this is a picture of the wife, about 25 feet down - I'm a little lower. I kept waiting for someone to come down so I could try an upwards picture and I think it turned out well. The husband was a fantastic diver, but I was never down at the same time... actually I was. The husband dove down first, the 15 seconds later I dove down, and headed straight down to the "death sign" to take a picture of another diver that deep (the water is very clear, but without ambient light, it's hard to see )... and... he's nowhere around. He took a light with him, but I didn't see anything farther down. I'm guessing he was at a minimum of 90 feet if I couldn't see his light. On the way up, I looked around in the crannies, but he wasn't to be found. By the time he came up, I would have had time to swim down and up another time.
Random fish shots. Notice the teeth of the fish in the last picture. Margaret remembers those fish. >:-) That particular fish was just under 3 feet... average. I saw a really big one that barely veered out of the way as I came through. I was within 6 inches of him as I glided by the fish. I guess he was pretty comfortable with his weight.
Algae art in the cavern. The first picture has "JESSE", a tic-tac-toe game, and a figure of a spiky haired person.
And the geo-cache picture I said I would get posted for everyone. I dropped of the nail trimmers and picked up the baseball key chain. The paper on the left is 10 sheet stapled together with signatures filling up the first page. An officer left her card there. She came earlier that day and beat me to the geo-cache.
