Photos (c)  Brigitte & Thierry Baritaud, Rose Yates, Jerome Meynié

Days 1 & 2  "Cleaning the pond"

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In late autumn 2003, the pond surface had accumulated a mixture of leaves, soil and sediment. All of which was very unstable and waiting to mix with the pond, disturbing the already much reduced visibility. The walls of the cave had broken into segments and some nice 5-6 kg rocks are at present poised on the edge ready to fall down. Indeed,  they would just need a touch of a fin to fall on the head of a diver below. In addition, a slate 30x20 cm was also resting at -5m on the edge ...

... plus dead branches ranging from 1cm  to 30 cm of diameter ... that would be entertaining through my decompression !

But the worst feature of all was most definitely the rubbish: washing machine drum, metallic bars  … and the floating toxic drugs vials, gas sprays, alcohol bottles …

How could Thierry and Jérôme resist to such an attractive opportunity? Accepting the challenge, they decided to clean the pond from the surface to the narrow -10m passage step by step for the first two days. I'm sure the local environmentalists, and in fact anyone with children, are thankful!

Thierry also used that opportunity to check the vertical decompression rope attached from -1m to -40m on the slope of the gigantic cave, whilst  Jérôme cleaned old lines and staged safety decompression tanks in case the main and secondary rebreather should fail.

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Copyright 2003 by Dr Jerome Meynie. All rights reserved. Revised: 11 Dec 2003 22:37:54 -0000.