A week of Survey

Part of the reason for coming back to Mexico was to undertake more training. I have long wanted to not only explore the caves of the Yucatan peninsula but also to gain a better understanding of them.

The best way to meet this second goal was to engage in GUE's Cave Survey course. Designed by Fred Devos and other GUE educational bods the program encompasses all that is needed to get you on the way to producing valuable data and drawing up your findings into a full map. The course weighs heavily on the Survey side of things but there are also elements of cartography tackled within.

We start as with all courses with theory, Moving through the value of stick maps vs wall measurements " If there is no walls there is no cave!" then on to how best to tackle sketching and detailing within the constraints of gas limitations and logistical dive planning. 

We were really lucky in that we had the chance to dive a place which is usually unavailable to divers. Because of the efforts made by the team here and the continued science project work of GUE in the area the land owner allowed us access for the purposes of surveying the cave (No pressure eh!)

Tatich is a large system so we focussed our efforts around the downstream main line and local jumps. The area we were in is beautifully decorated with columns and calcite mounds, even a Dog house where mineral deposits had formed over sediment which has been washed away leaving a lace dome of strands standing above the floor of the cave. We were in a shallow section no deeper than 7 meters and it had plenty of twists and turns and a balance of smaller swim-able areas and large rooms.

It has been the same feeling as many courses with the organisation. At first you feel way out of your depth task loaded  and engaging in something unfamiliar but slowly the pieces come together. When we first took our pages from the survey wet notes it was hard to believe that they would ever amount to more than scribbling and child like handwriting but each night we plotted the data and slowly we saw the cave appear in front of our eyes.

We have used a lot of new kit on this course. Hand held sonar, Survey compasses and wet notes, tape measures and  even a 1 meter long piece of string to get the data we needed. All of these technologies are reliable but it will be interesting to see what happens in future with the development of drones, lasers and the like!