We posted a few photos from Russia's longest cave system in April, but the Daily Mail recently posted this article with a bit more information (as well as the video below) about the divers, the photos, and Orda Cave, the longest underwater gypsum crystal cave in the world.
It looks like the set of a Hollywood action movie but these images were taken by a team of expert cave divers in the depths of Russia.
A team of daring cave divers have produced an incredible photo-reportage of the longest underwater gypsum crystal cave in the world.
The Orda Cave in the western Urals region is three miles of eerily dramatic natural channels created by water so clear divers can see over 50 yards ahead of them.
Over a period of six months the intrepid team led by photographer and journalist, Victor Lyagushkin, 40, from Russia explored the water filled cave tunnels at temperatures barely above freezing.
The body of a world-renowned cave diver has been recovered from the underwater channels where she was trapped.
Agnes Milowka, 29, ran out of air after becoming separated from her diving companion on Sunday in the eight-kilometre-long channel system of Tank Cave near Mt Gambier, in South Australia's southeast.
Members of the close-knit diving community had retrieved her body, police said in a statement on Wednesday.
Tank Cave is one of Australia's longest underwater caves, and divers had to clear and widen the channels to make it easier to retrieve her body 600 metres from the entrance to the sink hole.
Visibility was a difficulty with sediment from any movement taking hours to clear.
Some of the channels were so narrow divers could feel the walls pressing against them.
A somber follow-up to news of the death of Agnes Milowka over the weekend, revealing insight into her final minutes underwater.
CAVE diver Agnes Milowka remained calm until her last breath as she tried to find her way to the surface.
Dr Richard Harris, a close friend of 29-year-old Ms Milowka, says she didn't panic in her final moments.
He is part of the team trying to clear the way for police divers to retrieve her body from Tank Cave, near Millicent.
Dr Harris, who had seen Ms Milowka's body submerged under 20m of water in a tight section of the cave about 550m from the entrance, said she was not trapped before her death.
He said Ms Milowka, who worked as a stunt diver for James Cameron's movie Sanctum, had ran out of air and suffocated after becoming disoriented.
She was separated from her diving partner and later became lost after stirring up silt from the cave walls and floor.
"It looks like she has remained very calm right to the last breath while she's been working at extricating herself," close friend and state safety officer Dr Harris said.
...
He said Ms Milowka - a marine archaeologist - was at the "leading edge" of the sport and respected worldwide for her diving skills.
Her "aggression" in the winding and narrow tunnels might have cost her life, after venturing into "a very narrow, rocky piece of passage," which took divers about an hour to reach, he said.
"There was no room in there for two people so she was by herself. To dive by yourself under certain situations is acceptable in this sport," he said.
A shocking blow to the international dive community over the weekend, as Victorian cave diver Agnes Milowka died in one of Australia's largest underground cave systems.
World-class in her proficiency underwater, Milowka was recently a stunt diver in James Cameron's film SANCTUM.
You'll notice the footage at the beginning of this video was shot by Karst Productions. Karst was of course the production company founded by the late, great cave-diving adventurer himself, Wes Skiles.
The body of Agnes Milowka, 29, was found today, after she went missing from a group of divers in Tank Cave, South Australia yesterday afternoon.
The world-class diver and keen underwater photographer was reported missing about 1.45pm yesterday, before the death was confirmed by authorities today.
...
Ms Milowka was well-known in cave-diving circles and is highly experienced, describing her interests on her website as "exploration, adventure and scuba diving".
The Polish born expert HAS explored caves from Tasmania to the Bahamas, gained qualifications in maritime archeology and also worked for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, before acting as a stunt diver for two female characters in Sanctum.
On Friday, Ms Milowka tweeted her excitement at the upcoming South Australian diving expedition.
“Another w-end of cave diving in Mt Gambier ... fabulous! Can't wait to get underground,'' she wrote.
Tank Cave stretches at least 7km underground near Mt Gambier, in South Australia's southeast.
Ms Milowka wrote about the Tank Cave system in December, describing it as the “crowning jewel” of the caves in the region, writing for Cave Diving Down Under.
At the time she believed the cave was relatively safe: “The cave is stunning, it is relatively shallow (a max depth around 20m), there is no flow to fight and the water is crystal clear - you can't go wrong really.”
But she also wrote that the system was complicated, “like a spider web gone wild” and meant divers must learn the cave carefully to navigate tight restrictions and often zero visibility.
The adventurous diver wrote she had already discovered another side passage at least 300m long in the system on a previous visit, and hoped to discover more on visits such as her tragic final one.
She said that passage was a small hole, too tiny for her buddy, but she squeezed through for a brief foray into the darkness before turning back.
On her website, Ms Milowka says she is well aware of the risks she faces everytime she submerged into the dark subterranean world of cave diving."It would be difficult to claim that caves are completely safe" she says.
"Going into caves in general carries a certain amount of risk, and then if you add water and submerge the cave then obviously the risks increase."
And you just had to know the man behind the lens was the late, great Wes Skiles.
It's photos like these that makes you understand how daring and ridiculously talented Wes truly was.
No, it's not a still from Sanctum - although James Cameron's new diving film was inspired by a near-catastrophic expedition by the man who took these pictures, Wes C Skiles.
This is a real photograph from one of the most mysterious environments in the world. You could visit Abaco Island, in the Bahamas, and have no idea that beneath you lies this vast network of caves, accessible by as many as a thousand 'blue holes' - submerged vertical caves peppered with entrances to this forbidding domain.
Exploring these passages is the diving equivalent of climbing K2 - you've got to be exceptionally well trained and well prepared. Even then, safety is no guarantee; Wes C Skiles died during a dive last summer.
And as you would expect, NatGeo has stunning photos to accompany the intriguing article.
Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava are members of PET (Projecto Espeleológico de Tulum), an organization that specializes in the exploration and survey of underwater caves on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Alex, Franco and Beto have surveyed tens of thousands of feet of mazelike cave passages in the state of Quintana Roo. The team's relatively recent explorations of a large pit named Hoyo Negro (Black Hole, in Spanish), deep within a flooded cave, resulted in their breathtaking and once-in-a-lifetime discovery of the remains of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull at the very bottom of the black abyss.
TREADING water in scuba gear in the dead of night while waiting for a 3D camera to be fixed, actor Richard Roxburgh weighed up the benefits of 3D technology.
The 3D element made our lives just a little more difficult," says Roxburgh of his experience on the Gold Coast Movie World studio set of action thriller Sanctum.
...
Roxburgh and fellow cast members Rhys Wakefield, Ioan Gruffudd, Alice Parkinson and Dan Wyllie went to work on an elaborate, lifelike set. It was manufactured, but that didn't make facing 1000 litres of water while scaling its walls in scuba gear any easier.
Roxburgh plays an uncompromising cave explorer leading a group of divers through a deadly flooded underground caving system. They fight raging water, deadly terrain and rising panic as they search for an escape route to the sea.
...
"3D was a nightmare," he says. "Its camera is famously slow, and because it is new technology, it's fraught with issues. For instance, the camera runs very hot, and when it breaks down, it has to be rebooted and that takes time.
"Consequently the actors were paddling in water the whole time in wetsuits and we were freezing while waiting for the camera to be fixed.
"Also we had to shoot all the underwater scenes at night. I still don't know why. It was just one of those weird things. A lot of the time actors don't ask questions, you just do it."
Roxburgh had only a resort-holiday diving course in Fiji under his weighted belt when he took on Sanctum between two other major acting gigs.
A terrific cave diving article over at the Portland Press Herald about Maine dentist and cave diver Stephen Klinker, who trained under the expert supervision of Larry Green.
Stephen Klinker could have died several times while diving in dark, constricted underwater caves.
There was the time when both of his calves cramped up and he could no longer propel himself. He inflated a flotation device until it carried him up, where he could grab the cave's ceiling and work his calves until his legs could function.
Or the time he got tangled in rope, flipped upside down and his arm sank into quicksand-like silt and mud. Knowing he would be sucked in deeper with the slightest movement, he sent a distress signal and remained completely limp until his instructor could help free him.
Despite the close calls -- and, in a way, because of them -- Klinker relishes the challenge of cave diving. "Panic is not an option," he said. "This is a mind-over-matter situation."
Klinker, 54, lives in Norridgewock and owns Cornerstone Dental in Waterville. He is married and has four sons. He received his cave diving certification from one of the world's experts on Jan. 16, after completing the last of two required "perfect" cave dives.
Cave diving is a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming popular only within the last two decades. It is in the public spotlight with this weekend's release of "Sanctum," an action-thriller movie from executive producer James Cameron.
The film, based on the experiences of the film's writer, is about how a storm traps a team of cave divers underground.
The renowned cave diver who instructed Klinker, Larry Green, was an informal adviser to the makers of "Sanctum." Green literally has written a manual on cave diving.
Speaking this week from the outskirts of Gainesville, Fla., Green said he's not sure why cave diving has become so popular.
He noted that it can be a deadly endeavor for divers who don't train properly or use enough caution. Even so, he said it is actually "a very safe sport."
"It's that mental and physical responsibility; it's up to me and nobody else," Green said.
"Even though it's an adverse environment, the activity itself is one where you should be in control of the variables that affect your well being -- more so than any other activity."
NOTE: This entry has been cross-posted from MarkGlesne.com
Last Friday I had the privilege of being asked by Universal Pictures to attend a screening the new film SANCTUM (which is out today) at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. I was also honored to be asked to join cast and crew the next day at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons for a Q&A round table of sorts.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the film’s release since I first caught wind of it last summer. So you can imagine my excitement to be asked to view it a week before its release, as well as meet with those involved in its creation.
There aren’t too many movies centered around scuba diving, so this was certainly a movie you couldn’t pay me to miss.
If you have yet to see the trailer, check it out...
And here’s the official synopsis:
The 3D action-thriller Sanctum, from executive producer James Cameron, follows a team of underwater cave divers on a treacherous expedition to the largest, most beautiful and least accessible cave system on Earth. When a tropical storm forces them deep into the caverns, they must fight raging water, deadly terrain and creeping panic as they search for an unknown escape route to the sea.
Master diver Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) has explored the South Pacific’s Esa-ala Caves for months. But when his exit is cut off in a flash flood, Frank’s team—including 17-year-old son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) and financier Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd)—are forced to radically alter plans. With dwindling supplies, the crew must navigate an underwater labyrinth to make it out. Soon, they are confronted with the unavoidable question: Can they survive, or will they be trapped forever?
Shot on location off the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, Sanctum employs 3-D photography techniques Cameron developed to lens Avatar. Designed to operate in extreme environments, the technology used to shoot the action-thriller will bring audiences on a breathless journey across plunging cliffs and into the furthest reaches of our subterranean world.
I have to admit, I was a bit worried going into the film.
The movie is quite obviously centered around cave diving — extreme cave diving, no less. So I suppose I was worried the movie would be over-produced. That is, worried Hollywood would take a dive story inspired by true events and… well… make it too Hollywood.
That wasn’t the case. This is a movie scuba divers of all stripes and specialties will enjoy. Now, if you’re looking for in-depth character and plot development — you’re looking in the wrong crevice. SANCTUM makes no bones about being a non-stop, action-adventure flick. And I prefer movies (of all genres) that don’t attempt to be something they’re not.
I was also incredibly pleased with the way in which 3D technology was incorporated into the film. Again, not over-done. I don’t need a barrage of things jumping off the screen at me while trying to enjoy the movie’s experience. The 3D effect also added quite appropriately to the underwater effect experienced by divers.
As for the storyline, no spoilers here. You’re going to have to experience that for yourself. However, I will say this: At one point I caught myself literally holding my breath. When you see it, I think you’ll know which point. The closest I’ve come to the sort of diving depicted in the movie was scuba diving Riviera Maya cenotes with my wife. SANCTUM will take you to a whole new depth.
I returned home around 11:30 Friday evening, well after my wife and son had gone to sleep. I couldn’t help but smile as I used the illumination from my iPhone to navigate the long, dark, narrow hallway that leads to the master bedroom.
WARNING: Divers may experience residual effects.
As I mentioned, I was also asked to join members of the cast and crew for a press conference Q&A the following day. I was stoked to meet up and speak with Jeff from Psycho Solo Diver. After getting a feel for those in attendance, I can all but guarantee we were the only scuba divers in attendance.
From the actors, I was interested to hear about receiving their Open Water PADI certifications and then moving immediately into re-breather training. Talk about moving from one end of the spectrum to the other in no time at all. I asked Ioan specifically about the cast’s dive prep and schedule during the last four weeks of filming — when all the underwater scenes were shot.
He explained first that they filmed underwater only at night. This is, after all, a movie about diving where the sun doesn’t shine. He also described the two phases of topside dive prep they had to undergo before each scene could be shot. The first was cast and crew huddled around a miniature model of the set. Each person was shown where they would be, where the safety divers (3-4 per actor) would reside, and where the cameras would be set. The second phase consisted of cast and crew walking through the motions in a parking lot, or “blocking the scene”, as he called it. (The set was terrific, by the way. If you’d like to see more about its construction, I recommend watching NatGeo’s special, The Real Sanctum.)
From my own experience, this isn’t at all unlike what military forces do before certain missions. Proper planning often consists of drawing tactics in the sand, walking them out, and then executing — each exercise getting larger in the process.
Thankfully, the cast didn’t describe any sort of particularly serious accidents during the underwater (or topside) training or filming. It sounds like dive coordinator John Garvin ran a tight ship — enforcing the time-honored tradition of “Plan your dive, dive your plan.”
James Cameron discussed with us how the project was actually four years in the making, as the film’s financing fell through during the economic downturn and took time to be re-established. I spoke one-on-one with Andrew Wight after the round table and asked about Wes Skiles’ involvement in the film. As painful as the recent passing of Wes must have been for Andrew, he appeared relieved to be asked a — shall I say — more in-depth question about the film. Don’t get me wrong, the press did was it was called to do. Questions were asked about past and future films, production considerations, and technical difficulties. But I’m not press. I’m a member of the dive community. I saw the film as a diver, not a movie critic.
Andrew and I discussed how Wes was involved early on — after all, he was there for the true events that inspired the project — but was not specifically involved in the filming of the movie. He had hoped Wes would be able to be more involved, but as we all know, Wes was out there doing what he loved until the day he passed.
Were Wes still alive today, I think it’s fair to say he’s be quite pleased with SANCTUM. A film that depicts the sort of mentality required to push yourself into Earth’s previously unseen cavities and cave systems.
A film about true bravery, tough choices… and even tougher decisions.
In this special episode of Talking Scuba, host Bob Shoemaker speaks with legendary cave diver, underwater cinematographer, and independent filmmaker Jill Heinerth.
Jill shares some of her amazing cave diving stories, fond memories of the late Wes Skiles, and insight from work on underwater films such as The Cave and James Cameron’s upcoming film, Sanctum.
One diver made his way down to a depth of over 636 feet, or 194m.
Adrenalin-seeking Australian cave divers have set new records in Nelson.
The group has spent the past two weeks exploring the Pearse River resurgence in Kahurangi National Park – with one diver, Craig Challen, a veterinarian of Perth, breaking a record for Australiasia.
He superseded the depth reached by Adelaide doctor Richard Harris, at the cave in 2008, by 12 metres by diving 194m deep into the system which took nearly nine hours.
While the descent took about 27 minutes, Mr Challen was under water for about nine hours because the decompression process meant he ascended to the surface in stages.
"There's a bit of a quiet time before you dive where you reflect, but once in the water it's all go and your mind is fixed."
During the dive Mr Challen was able to decompress in comfort stopping at two out of four plastic "habitat" boxes set at 7m, 16m, 28m and 40m.
The boxes have seats, a radio for communication and music. Mr Challen was also delivered hot soup and chocolate by the other divers while he sat in the boxes.
Sandy Varin, a horticulturist from Melbourne, who has 22 years diving experience, also set a record for women in Australia and New Zealand by diving 156m.
"You get a bit of an adrenalin kick, the main thing is not to hurry."
...
"It's cool to go somewhere and know you are the first person to see it."
The remains of a prehistoric child were removed from an underwater cave in Mexico four years after divers stumbled upon the well-preserved corpse that offers clues to ancient human migration.
The skeletal remains of the boy, dubbed the Young Hol Chan, are more than 10,000 years old and are among the oldest human bones found in the Americas.
The corpse was discovered in 2006 by a pair of German cave divers who were exploring unique flooded sandstone sinkholes, known as cenotes, common to the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
Scientists spent three years studying the remains where they lay before deciding it was safe to bring the skeleton to the surface for further study, according to the Mexican National Institute for Anthropology and History.
The institute is coordinating a study of early human migration to eastern Mexico that aims to deepen understanding of the movement of people across the Bering Strait at the end of the last Ice Age.
The Young Hol Chan, named after the cenote where he was discovered, was found in a darkened cave 27 feet (8.3 meters) beneath the surface.
USA Today leads us into an upcoming National Geographic feature on the wonders and weird science provided inside the Bahamas' blue holes.
What lies below the Bahamas in the Caribbean? A veiled world of fossils, blind creatures and scientific riddles.
In next month's issue of National Geographic magazine, an international team of cave divers led by anthropologist Kenny Broad of the University of Miami reveals the mysteries hidden from vacationers' view.
The two-month expedition, paid for by the National Geographic Society, was merely a small slice of time in a years-long effort to uncover the secrets of this realm, which has been plumbed by researchers for at least three decades.
Only a few miles inland from the Bahamas' sparkling coral reefs, the islands' limestone boasts dozens of submerged caves, "blue holes," some of them hidden in what look like island swimming holes linked to the ocean.
But swimming holes they are not. The inland caves on five islands sport freshwater caps covering heavier saltwater layers, sometimes filled with clouds of poisonous hydrogen sulfide released by salt-eating microbes, acting to preserve whatever falls within. Others contain whirlpools powered by the tides.
"Cave diving is really about knowing your limits," Broad says. "But it provides one of the most amazing experiences in life, and the scientific opportunities are tremendous."
The body of a student cave diver, which has lain in one of the UK's most dangerous cave systems since his death 39 years ago, has been recovered.
Paul Esser, a medical student at Bristol University, was just 21 when he disappeared in the Porth yr Ogof cave system at Ystradfellte, Powys in 1971.
His remains were finally recovered a week ago by two members of the West Brecon Cave Rescue Team.
Powys coroner Peter Maddox recorded a verdict of accidental death.
According to reports following Mr Esser's death in February 1971, it was understood that he had followed the wrong line as he made for an exit, and ran out of air.
A spokeswoman for Dyfed Powys Police said: "Although he was located at that time in the caves, his body was never able to be recovered despite several attempts over the following weeks and as a result he has remained in the location he died."
Family members, who were living in Surrey at the time of his death, were at the scene as his remains were finally brought to the surface on Thursday, and released to hold a funeral.
Recording the accidental death verdict, the Powys coroner said the cause of death remains "unascertained".
That's according to the results of study recently published in a fancy schmancy academic journal.
The writers and researchers of the article — O. Ashton Morgan and William Huth of Appalachian State University in North Carolina and University of West Florida, respectively — developed a single-site travel cost model to show the economic value associated with recreational cave diving.
The end results, published recently in “Resource and Energy Economics,” amazed even the researchers. The article states that under the spring’s existing conditions, the economic impact of each diver was estimated to be approximately $146 to $167 per person, per trip. Based on the number of expected trips this translates into approximately $1,075 in annual per-person economic impact, or $575,000 a year. However, Huth explained that since publishing the article, he has since talked to Blue Springs personnel who say the number of divers has since doubled.
“So basically we are not looking at $575,000 in annual surplus, we’re talking more like a $1 million,” Huth said. “Blue Springs could easily, beyond the jails, be the biggest incoming revenue source for Jackson County, with it bringing in about a $1 million a year.”
However, the study revealed more than just the economic impact of springs diving. It also gave insight to the cave’s potential demand among divers, if improvement to access were made.
Huth and Morgan described in their article that the cave has two potential ways to grow in consumer demand.
The first is to improve access to Twin Caves Spring and Hole in the Rock Spring, which are currently only accessible by boat.
Second, if divers were granted access to a newly discovered passage, this too would have an impact.
While some people might die doing science, a lot of people die cave diving: each year an average of 20 worldwide. The U.S. National Speleological Society defines a successful cave dive as "one you return from." "Extreme Cave Diving" is really about the blue holes of the Bahamas. It's about cutting-edge science that gives us important data about our climate and reveals a lot about the Eden of now-extinct animals that once lived on the islands of the Bahamas. But blue holes are immense, flooded caves, and the only way to explore them is through the dangerous sport of cave diving. In our 21-day expedition, and the resulting film, diving and the threat of dying sometimes overshadowed the science.
...
Is diving really that dangerous? No, but diving in caves is. More people have died cave diving than climbing Mount Everest. Cave divers say of their sport, "There are no injuries, just fatalities." I've filmed in three war zones, but I think the chances of someone dying were higher in blue holes than in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Zaire. In the war zones, you hold onto the not-unreasonable hope that you can keep crew members alive by being extra careful. I didn't think I could do anything about the dangers of the blue holes, except drain them—which is a ridiculous notion, and a crime, because damaging blue holes would be like burning a library.
Cave divers are a breed all their own. Need proof? How many recreational scuba divers do you know that would spend almost a week, more than half a mile below the earth's surface, in one of the world's deepest caves?
Divers bravely went were no man had gone before in a bid to find a link between the colossal Aspoladeru la Texa and Cueva Culiembro caves in northern Spain for the first time ever.
Students from the Oxford University Caving Club spent six days and nights living in darkness while exploring the giant limestone chambers.
It was part of an ongoing project and six week trip to chart these giants caves and discover new rock formations.
"It is a very special place to be," said caving club member Fleur Loveridge, 32.
"You feel a long way from the entrance, but it teaches you self reliance and brings out good team work."
We posted a few photos from Russia's longest cave system in April, but the Daily Mail recently posted this article with a bit more information (as well as the video below) about the divers, the photos, and Orda Cave, the longest underwater gypsum crystal cave in the world.
