More Leads–More Line

Terrence prepared everyone egg whites, bacon and toast this morning before departure. The team was motivated this morning and left Villas DeRosa’s at 7:30 AM. They did the usual update posting and email checking before arriving at Don Raphael’s.

The weather today was fantastic! It was almost chilly as we donned our wetsuits. Renee and Karl decided to continue exploring on the Time Line placed yesterday. In order to do so, they needed more gas. This was accomplished by both divers carrying 5 tanks each. Familiarity proved helpful and the team cruised down the passage more effectively. Renee observed a lone stygobitic shrimp gracefully gliding through the water column. Once at the end of the line, Karl and Renee explored a room with several breakdown areas. The possibilities seemed endless. They swam throughout the large boulders looking for a way through. After a time, they changed direction to a more likely going passage. This passage also involved breakdown that required lots of winding about. The rule of thirds reared its head and the team had to turn. The new line surveyed today was 210 feet. This team exited the water safely after a total of 190 minutes.

Terrence and Andrew once again were pushing up at the end of the Grand Canyon line, at the extreme end of the cave. They tried a number of potential leads but these either led nowhere or back to previously explored passage. Very frustrating. The cave configuration here is very confusing and difficult to explore systematically. When they were down to thirds they reluctantly swam back to Cenote Muchachos. Once again they saw several cave critters including a couple of blind cave fish. They also tidied up some areas of the guideline on the way.

Tomorrow 19 more team members will be joining us from Virginia and Florida. The students joining us will be participating in an analog project. They will be exploring and surveying a dry cave, conducting water quality studies, learning about reef life along with other educational opportunities. Please stay tuned!

Team Members

• Andrew Pitkin
• Renee Power
• Karl Shreeves
• Thecia Taylor
• Terrence Tysall

Send Questions or Comments to the Trilobite

Hope everything is going well in Akumal, just a few more days and Fuqua School with its 13 participants will be joining you. The students are extremely excited! Sorry you all had such complications at the airport; hopefully, things will clear up before we arrive. Congratulations to Terrence with his 3000th cave dive! Fuqua School is quite impressed by his achievement! We also are excited to see the maps and surveys that have been made. We have been passing the website address to everyone we see and are encouraging them to keep up with the current happenings by visiting it every day. The students are practically counting down the minutes before they get there. In the meantime, we hope you all continue to have safe and sound diving experiences and we will see you Saturday. How’s the weather? Today, we went 2 hours late due to SNOW!

Regards,
Mr. Newcombe
Ms. Trovato & the Fuqua School Team

It is all great here. The weather has been hot except for today. We are looking forward to your arrival. Many exciting adventures await you as you may have guessed. See you very soon!