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Diving Down Under: Australia’s Olwolgin Cave System

Advanced Adventure, Australia and Pacific, Rebreathers, Scuba_News, standards, Teach First Aid/CPR, Tec, Tec Diving, Technology, TecRec, TecRec IT Crossover, UW Photography, Wrecks /

The adventure starts, as all Nullarbor trips do, with packing. Spare batteries — camera, strobes, primary light, backup lights, video lights, headlight for camping. Food — cooked and frozen pasta and stews, roasted nuts; don’t forget the washing-up bucket. Tanks and tents, underwater lights, drinking-water drums, a camping stove, hundreds of feet of guideline. There are no opportunities to buy on arrival when you’re on a road trip to the middle of nowhere. We will be completely self-sufficient for the duration of our stay, camping by the cave entrance, generating our own power and filling our own tanks. From my home in Melbourne, Australia, it’s more than 1,400 miles to Olwolgin Cave.

NULLARBOR BOUND

Most stories of diving the Nullarbor caves talk about the route. First, major multilane highways. Then, after Adelaide, gentle rolling hills and billboards. As the farmed greenery fades away nearly 1,000 miles later, options disappear. From here, it’s a single-lane highway snaking along the southern coastline of our continent.

We pass suicidal kangaroos and thundering road trains, and stop for the night in a tiny country town. Two days later we are on the Nullarbor proper, where the Southern Ocean crashes against high limestone cliffs.

The Nullarbor Plain was named from the Latin “null” and “arbor,” meaning “no trees.” It makes fat and feature-less into a feature. The limestone cliffs swerve inland from the sea, and we drive down onto the lower plains. From the highway turnoff, it’s a slower and bumpier journey along a dirt track.

The entrance to Olwolgin Cave is just under a mile from our campsite. After initial trips walking tanks between camp and cave in backpacks, some bright spark pointed out that the sandy walking track had become quite fat. The next trip out saw an explosion of wheelbarrows. The key to correct wheelbarrowing of dive gear is to move most of the weight over the front wheel, reducing stress on the arms. Of course, if you move all of the gear to the front, the wheelbarrow is almost impossible to steer and will tip over uncontrollably. Like many things in life, it’s a balance.

A FUZZY FRONTIER

Because we are down below the cliff line and close to the water table, the entrance to Olwolgin is a small depression rather than a massive doline. A rocky overhang shields two pools of water from the midday sun. Both were first dived in early 2002; the more promising-looking pool was declared a no-go — too small, with no way on. The smaller, harder-to-climb-into pool did the opposite — it opened up to a maze of shallow tunnels. Over the course of a few years and a lot of trips, the known extent of the tunnels was festooned with orange guideline, and the map rapidly expanded.

Unlike the clear-blue water and huge tunnels of the deep caves above the cliff line, Olwolgin features dark-green water. In some underwater caves elsewhere on the planet, divers can see a halocline — a clearly visible layer where heavier salt water and the overlying fresh water mix. In Olwolgin, this layer is dispersed through the tunnel, with the different salinity concentrations blending smoothly into each other. When we unavoidably swim through the mix, the disturbance creates a blurry layer of water that bends and traps light. I watch my buddy, Tim Muscat, swim past, seeing the wake of his gentle fin kicks in whirling fuzzy water behind him.

The mixing layers have created fantastic shapes, eroding the limestone at every level. But it makes photographs difficult — I cannot take a picture through water that someone has swum through. Instead, I find myself swimming hard up against one wall before turning into the middle of the tunnel and doubling back toward my following buddy. As long as both Tim and I keep moving forward into undisturbed water, the photos are clear and sharp. If I stop, the fuzzy mixing layer envelops the front of my camera housing. There are a few midwater collisions as we try to get the timing right. Tim is remarkably patient with my camera obsession. Distracting, unseen tunnels beckon left and right at every intersection of the guideline.

Tree roots from the surface have found their way down to the cave below, spreading out on subterranean surfaces until they drop into the depths under their own weight. The saltier layers farther down kill the roots, and the tree starts anew, growing another net of roots on the surface. The ghostly remains underneath form a fragile, tangled web hanging in the water. Signage reminds divers to swim along set pathways, ensuring that neither water movement nor a careless exhalation destroys these eerie creations. I try to get close enough for photos while staying far enough away to protect the roots from my presence.

A TALE OF TWO POOLS

The rest of the team is not here for photographs. After several years of exploration and new tunnel discoveries via the first entrance pool, the cave seemed to have given up most of its secrets. Then, on a trip in late 2010, original explorer Paul Hosie decided to have one more look into that promising pool on the other side of the depression. With years of familiarity with the cave and its small crevices, he pushed down a twisty underwater chimney and through nearly 200 feet of a very small fattener. With an epic effort behind him — and a long, zero-viz exit — he was rewarded with a massive tunnel ahead. Suddenly, the push for newly discovered cave tunnels was on again, and the “downstream” Olwolgin rapidly showed itself to be larger, longer and more complex than the originally discovered “upstream” side.

While the others eagerly push into unknown territory and find inter-connecting side passages, I rejoice in being able to maneuver my large camera housing through the very small entrance. The rock scalloping in this newly revealed side of the system is stunning, and bigger tunnels give more room to swim around the fuzzy waters. Tim and I have limited time, and we select the most photogenic areas to visit, capturing images of places seen only by two or three divers so far.

Over the past five years, downstream Olwolgin has been the gift that keeps on giving. The exploration frontier is now more than a mile from the entrance, with more than 5 miles of mapped passages. There are huge rooms that make you wonder what’s holding up the roof, and tiny restrictions to convince you that you’ve reached the end of the cave — until squeezing through reveals large, continuing passages. In places, the roof has one set of bubbles down the middle, evidence that the exploration divers swam straight through to new territory, and no one has looked closely at either wall yet.

It’s a stunning cave, and it’s a privilege to be the first to dive these unseen places.

WHAT IT TAKES

Olwolgin is classified as an advanced dive site. Bookings of qualified divers are managed through the Western Australia Department of Lands. By limiting the number of divers, each diver has a better experience underwater, and the impact on the cave is reduced.

To become qualified for cave diving in Australia requires three courses after your Advanced Open Water cert: Deep Cavern, Cave and Advanced Cave. Each has experience requirements and prerequisites. Divers with other cave qualifications can complete crossover courses with the CDAA; international visitors can obtain a visitors permit and temporary membership of the CDAA with a local sponsor.

5 TIPS FOR SHOOTING OLWOLGIN

Olwolgin is a challenging place to take photos, with green, blurry water and things like navigation to concentrate on. Photographing here takes special techniques to capture the cave.

1 Add more light Although the water is dark, the cave walls are white. By putting extra strobes on your buddy, you can extend the light beyond the camera and bring depth to the photos.

2 Keep swimming The mixing halocline layer will make every photo look out of focus. Keep moving forward into undisturbed water to get a clear shot.

3 Pre-focus Modern cameras are great at low-light focusing, but they still struggle in darker caves. Your buddy might not appreciate a primary light in her face for focusing each shot. Pre-focus the camera at the right distance, and snap happily.

4 Go wide Tunnels here can be large, but there are beautiful sights in the smaller areas too. The little tunnels don’t provide an opportunity to back up to capture it all, so a very wide-angle lens is key.

5 Be gentle Olwolgin has some beautiful and very delicate features such as tree roots and scalloped rocks. Before you get close to them to photograph, work out how to carefully approach each one, and think through how you’re going to swim away afterward without causing damage.

NEED TO KNOW

Olwolgin is a long way from anywhere, and there are no commercial operators running cave-diving trips to the region. PLANNING a trip to the Australian desert carries its own risks completely separate from the cave-diving experience. A car breakdown without appropriate EQUIPMENT can leave you stranded and in serious trouble. Things like additional spare tires, a satellite phone and an extensive first-aid kit should all come into consideration. From a diving perspective, there are no spares on site. The most innocuous failure (like a drysuit seal or a smashed prescription mask) can leave a diver sitting at camp while the rest of the team enjoys themselves underwater. Think through your kit and consider things you don’t have a second option for because they rarely break. Both the car trip across the country and the wheelbarrow trip into the cave can lead to unexpected gear breakage before you even hit the water. COSTS for diving here are not huge; the ACCOMMODATIONS come at the cost of a BYO tent. Fuel for the vehicle, a hotel room for a night along the way, and beer for your stay-at-home dive buddies so you can borrow their dive gear for extra spares are the largest expense items. TEMPERATURES can climb to more than 100 degrees during the day and drop below freezing at night at any time of year. So, although spring and fall tend to be milder, a warm sleeping bag and a big hat are essential. Once in the cave, the water stays a constant 61 degrees year-round.

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The World’s Dirtiest Dive Jobs

Dive Careers, Rebreathers, Scuba_News, standards, Teach First Aid/CPR, Tec, Tec Diving, Technology, TecRec, TecRec IT Crossover, The Ocean Corporation, UW Photography, Wrecks /

For most divers, spending time underwater is all about having fun. But some see the underwater world in a totally different way: as a job — and a challenging one at that. From commercial divers to underwater investigators, we spoke to five brave men and women who earn their livings in treacherous environments, where their skill and experience keeps them safe when they work — underwater.

Nuclear Reactor Diver

Commercial diving — working underwater, usually wearing a helmet with surface-supplied air rather than a scuba tank — encompasses a variety of diving jobs, but few raise eyebrows so much as those in and around nuclear reactors.

Before she went to commercial-diving school, Kyra Richter had been a scuba diver for 10 years, working as a dive instructor in Asia and the Caribbean, and as a technical cave diver in Mexico’s cenotes. “Despite all this, I knew as a woman I’d have a hard time in the male-dominated environment of offshore commercial diving, even though my dream was to be a saturation diver,” she says. “One of my instructors had photos of himself working in a nuclear plant, and it fascinated me from day one.”

Today, Richter is a nuclear-dive-program supervisor for a plant in Michigan and has consulted on programs in the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. “Nuclear diving is a mix of inland and industrial diving, which means we work in rivers, lakes and oceans, and in man-made intake tunnels, condensers, pools, tanks and other structures inside the plant,” Richter explains. “We work in open or closed systems, clean or dirty water, which is contaminated water that contains radioactive isotopes.”

But for all the eyebrow-raising nuclear diving might cause, Richter says it’s one of the safest forms of commercial diving. “There is a lot less expense-cutting and a lot more support from the industry to appropriately staff a job,” she says. However, that doesn’t mean it’s without risk.

she says. Overexposing a diver to radiation is highly unlikely. “That’s why we clean all areas prior to work, do surveys of the work area, and the divers carry probes so that they can survey each area themselves before they walk into them,” she explains. “We’re also remotely monitored by radiation-protection technicians who can get instant readings on the doses we’re receiving.”

Criminal Investigator

When bad guys want to cover up a crime, they often try to hide the evidence underwater.

says Michael Berry, founder and president of Underwater Criminal Investigators. “It’s my job to not only find these items, but also recover them in a way that preserves any fingerprints, DNA or other evidence that might be left behind.”

When Berry started working as a police diver, there was no standardized training. “Everybody was studying rescue diving, but the reality is, the majority of what we do is recovery,” he says. He went on to develop the first Underwater Criminal Investigator course for PADI; today, UCI is a leader in police search-and-recovery training.

Over the nearly 30 years he has worked as an underwater investigator, Berry has found himself diving in every type of environment imaginable, and has encountered his share of aggressive wildlife along the way.

The worst problem he encountered came from bacteria. “I was diving in a rock quarry that had turned to mud over the years, looking for stolen merchandise, and I came across a bag filled with the rotting corpses of puppies and kittens,” he says. “I ended up catching meningitis and was out of commission for months — it almost killed me.”

Deadhead Logger

For technical-diving instructor John Claytor, the swamps and river-beds of Florida and Georgia are a treasure trove of lost old-growth lumber.

His story starts in the late 19th century, when a logging boom was in full swing, harvesting old-growth trees and transporting them by barge along U.S. waterways.

Claytor says experts estimate around 10 percent of those logs were lost when barges carrying them sank. The low oxygen content at the bottom of these rivers and lakes preserved the wood, and the scarcity of the logs makes them valuable.

“I started diving around here in 1965, when I was in junior high, hunting for old bottles and Native American artifacts. Everywhere I dived, I’d see these logs all over the bottom, so I started keeping track,” Claytor says. “Years later, I had to screw my head on right and start making a living. I had a lot of MacGyver blood in me, so I went back to those old notes and started teaching myself how to pull those logs out and process them into lumber.”

Today, Claytor and his son bring the trees up, dry them out, cut them into lumber, and then use them to create custom projects like furniture and flooring.

But the work, called deadhead logging, is one of the most dangerous types of logging. Underwater crews have been featured on the History channel show Ax Men. “I try to block out the negative when I’m down there,” says Claytor. “I’ve dealt with every hazard you can think of, from poisonous-snake bites, alligators and 250-pound snapping turtles to getting caught in fishing lines and nets.”

However, he says the biggest risk is the logs themselves.

Safety/Croc Wrangler

South African divemaster Richard Bolter has a truly unpredictable and dangerous diving job in a rare niche of his own creation. “More people have gone to the moon than do what I do,” he says. That’s because he’s a fixer and safety diver who specializes in arranging and leading diving expeditions for underwater photographers who wish to go face to face with deadly, man-eating Nile crocodiles in Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta.

“I first got the idea while I was visiting the area with some friends on a bush holiday,” Bolter says. “During the summer months, the water gets crystal clear, and when I went under the water for the first time, I realized the crocs didn’t react the same as they do on the surface.” This led Bolter to establish certain rules of engagement that keep him and the divers that accompany him safe.

The most important rule: Never spend any time on the water’s surface, which sparks the crocs’ attention. “It’s military-style diving getting in and out of the water,” he says. Bolter also carefully vets any divers who want to hire him, and limits his services to professional documentary-film crews. “This environment is just not safe for tourist divers,” he says. “A company started bringing groups of tourists once, and soon a diver lost an arm to one of the crocs.”

Bolter says the key to successful encounters is cruising the canals, looking for crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks. “Usually they slip into the water when we pass by,” he says. “Then we jump in upstream and ride the current to where I predict they’ll settle on the bottom.” Underwater, the crocs are often placid, or at least have little interest in the divers. “They have very poor eyesight underwater, so they don’t really notice us, even up close,” he says. “But if you touch them anywhere near the side of the face, they attack.”

Offshore Saturation Diver

In the world of commercial divers, saturation diving is the endgame,” says Brian Lacey, a commercial and saturation diver based in Houston who freelances for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico, and overseas in countries such as Russia, India and Indonesia. “It’s the job everyone wants, and the only reason any of us do it is the money — it’s like being in jail for a month at a time.”

That’s because saturation divers do their work while living inside a diving bell or compression chamber. As anyone with a scuba certification knows, a diver’s body absorbs nitrogen under pressure. Recreational divers minimize this with time limits and slow ascent rates to avoid the bends, but saturation divers go under pressure and stay there until their bodies becomes saturated with nitrogen and can’t absorb any more. Saturated divers can dive indefinitely at great depths, as long as they stay under pressure. When the job is done, they’re slowly decompressed inside the chamber.

“A standard run is 30 days down, with a two-man team taking turns, working five hours at a time in the water,” Lacey explains.

Although it’s boring, the saturation part of the job isn’t particularly dangerous. Lacey says the greatest risks arise when he’s actually on a dive, where his job is assembling or taking apart oil and gas equipment, such as oil rigs and pipelines. “Working with underwater cutting torches is probably the most dangerous thing we do,” he says. “As you cut, the torch puts of hydrogen gas, and if you happen to be under a ledge, the gas can pool, and a spark from your torch can cause a major explosion — I had a small explosion once that rocked my head so hard it knocked the defog soap from my mask plate into my eyes.”

Are you ready for a diving career? The proper training can prepare you for a job that offers a lot of adventure.

The Ocean Corporation is a diver-training facility in Houston. Its campus has a dive- tank training complex, two decompression chambers, a diving bell, and “nondestructive testing” inspection equipment. Ocean Corporation offers two training certification paths that lead to a number of commercial-diving career possibilities.

Ultimate Diver Training
This program prepares divers to perform inspections, repairs and support services for a
variety of projects or facilities including nuclear power plants, bridges, municipal wastewater facilities, dams, ship harbors, ports, water towers, resorts and cruise lines, and aquariums.

Nondestructive Testing Training
NDT inspectors use sophisticated technology and equipment to identify and diagnose flaws in steel and concrete without disrupting the integrity of a structure. Certified NDT technicians perform inspections all over the world, in nuclear power plants and oil refineries as well as on airplanes, oil rigs and more.

To learn more, visit oceancorp.com.

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25 Years in Diving for Simon Liddiard & Blue Marlin Dive Centre

Asia Pacific, Rebreathers, Scuba_News, standards, Teach First Aid/CPR, Tec, Tec Diving, Technology, TecRec, TecRec IT Crossover, UW Photography, Wrecks /

Simon Liddiard and Blue Marlin Dive Centre, Gili Trawangan receive PADI Awards as they celebrate 25 years in the Diving Industry This year Blue Marlin Dive Centre on the island of Gili Trawangan in Indonesia, celebrated 25 years in the diving industry and to mark the occasion, recently hosted a […]

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