Diver UK – August 2019

(C. Jardin) #1

A


TASMANIAN CAVE-DIVING
team has made the long-
sought link between
Australia’s deepest and fourth-
deepest-known caves – and broken
the national cave-depth record in
the process.
Cavers have been trying to prove
a link between Niggly Cave and
Growling Swallet since the early
1900s. Diving alone, Stephen Fordyce,
32, reached an Australian record cave
depth of 395m as he negotiated some
250m of uncharted underwater
passages to find the connection.
The four-day expedition he had
spent a year organising was
supported by a caving team from
Hobart-based Southern Tasmanian
Caverneers (STC).
Though a member of the team,
Fordyce lives in Melbourne, where he
runs TFM Engineering Australia, which
makes specialist cylinder-filling and
technical-diving gear.
He tolddivErthat he flies down
some six times a year to join regular
cave-exploration projects, though
“dive attempts are rare and carefully
planned, as they are so much effort”.
The team of 10 spent four days
in late May camping in the Junee-
Florentine system of more than
600 caves and 50km of explored
underground passages that lies
beneath Mount Field National Park,
north-west of Hobart.

The arduous approach to the start
of the flooded passage carrying
Fordyce’s diving equipment took
seven hours. A 90-minute walk up
a steep hill to the Niggly Cave
entrance was followed by an hour
spent squeezing through a tight,
winding passage, and further
progress included a 250m abseil and
the crossing of a waterfall using
“flying fox” overhead-line apparatus.
The sump started at a cave depth
of 350m. “I then went off and did a
pretty lonely and scary dive for 100
minutes,” said Fordyce. The water
temperature was 7°C. He used two
sidemounted 9-litre composite tanks,
and 250m of line on four reels.
He described the horizontal dive
with a maximum dive-depth of 10m
as “not the open passage I’d hoped
for – all of my experience and
cunning was necessary to find the
way on through some improbable

and quickly silting passages to
make the connection”.
“I picked a left wall and
followed that a lot of the time.
Then at times it would get too
tight and so you have to go
back and around.
“There were a couple of really low
restrictions where I wasn’t sure I
could get through, and I had to really
wriggle.”
He described the moment of
meeting up with the Growling Swallet
system, in which he had previously
laid a line. “I was able to swim up and
see the guideline that I put in four
years ago, and tie the new guideline
to the old guideline and put a marker
saying ‘this is the connection point’.
“One of Australia’s most perplexing
underground puzzles has been
solved. This discovery is the result of
the combined work of generations of
cavers in Tasmania, and wouldn’t have
been possible without a huge team
effort.”
STC vice-president Dr Stefan
Eberhard, part of the expedition team,
said that establishing the link was
important for building both scientific
knowledge and environmental

protection.
“The Junee-Florentine caves
contain features of great cultural,
scientific and conservation value,
including archaeological heritage
sites, unique species of cave-adapted
fauna, bones of extinct megafauna
and ancient sediments deposited
during glacial periods,” he said.
“Exploration of these caves is far
from complete and much more of
this complex and extraordinary
puzzle remains to be discovered and
mapped by speleologists and cave-
divers for years to come.”
During the expedition the support
team had discovered a kilometre of
new passage, while Fordyce had
found a passage going towards
another cave 3km away – providing
a focus for the team’s next
underground venture.
Besides Fordyce and Eberhard,
the team consisted of Alan Jackson,
Gabriel Kinzler, Serena Benjamin,
Fraser Johnston, Petr Smejkal, Patrick
Eberhard, Chris Sharples and Rolan
Eberhard.
A documentary film, Tartarus:
The Search for the Junee Master Cave,
is being completed. n

DIVER NEWS


Team cracks


Tasmanian cave


puzzle


WITH DIVERSreporting seeing 20 or more
lionfish on single dives around Cyprus, marine
conservationists have held the first organised
series of culls in the island’s coastal waters.
Lionfish, natives of the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, were first recorded off Cyprus some five
years ago. They arrived as Mediterranean waters
warmed and an enlargement of the Suez Canal
eased their route through from the Red Sea.
Their numbers have increased rapidly. With
their venomous spines there is no other species
to predate on them, and each female lionfish can
produce as many as two million eggs a year.
Young lionfish mature quickly, consuming
native fish and crustaceans as they colonise reef
systems. The species is now identified as the

most ecologically harmful in the Mediterranean.
Since September 2017 scientists from the
University of Plymouth in the UK have been

working with bodies in Cyprus such as the
Marine & Environmental Research Lab on a four-
year project called RelionMed, funded by 1.
million euros from the EU LIFE programme. The
culls, combined with surveys to assess public
attitudes to lionfish, form part of this project.
“Lionfish are increasingly colonising these
waters, bringing with them a serious threat of
habitat destruction and species extinction,” says
marine biologist Prof Jason Hall-Spencer from
the University of Plymouth.
“Coastal communities rely on these waters for
fishing and tourism, so changes have knock-on
effects. Culling these invasive species is the only
effective way to reduce numbers and ensure that
marine protected areas continue to regenerate.”

divErNEt.com

NOW CYPRUS HAS TOO MANY FISH – OF THE WRONG SORT


STEFAN EBERHARD

STEWART DONN

Members of the cave-team, with
Fordyce on the left, Eberhard sitting.

Stephen Fordyce.

STEVE WEINMAN

divEr 12

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