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New World Record for the Longest Underwater Cave in Mexico - Update.

Автор: zenas@vip.gr
Дата: 28 Jan 2007

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New World Record for the Longest Underwater Cave in Mexico.
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Description: 28 Jan. 2007.

Posted for Steve Bogaerts:

Dear Friends,

On 25 January, 2007 Robbie Schmittner and I were finally able to connect
Sistema Sac Actun formerly the second longest underwater cave system in the
world to Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich formerly the third longest underwater
cave system in the world. Sistema Sac Actun is now the longest underwater
cave in the world overtaking the previously unrivaled Sistema Ox Bel Ha.
Sac is now also the longest cave in Mexico and the 9th longest cave in the
world which includes all of the dry cave systems. This accomplishment has
been 4 years in the making. It has been an incredible adventure and at
times an emotional rollercoaster as we have been close on several occasions
but not been able to make the final connection. We were both confident at
one point that we would have made the connection by December 2004 as we had
promising leads from both sides but they never quite made it and it ended
up taking us another 3 years to achieve. The final connection between
Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich and Sistema Sac Actun occurred between the Muul Ha
region in Sac Actun, and the Cenote Manati (aka Casa Cenote) region in
Nohoch Nah Chich. Cenote Por One, an extremely small and uninviting cave,
is positioned between these two areas. Following eight months of sidemount
and no-mount exploration, Por One was connected to Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich
on the 12th January. Seven more days of exploration dives following this
led to the final connection between Sac and Nohoch. On the day of the
connection Robbie started his dive from Muul Ha in sidemount configuration
equipped with 5 tanks , a DPV and a bottle of champagne! I began my dive
from Manati wearing my sidemount harness over my no-mount rig with 3 tanks
a dpv and a digital camera. The side mount harness would be staged forty
five minutes into the dive and another 45 minutes no-mounting would bring
me to the end of the line. We timed our dives to arrive at the connection
point at the same time placed the bottle of Champagne between the 2 lines
and used that to make the station for the final tie off between the two
cave systems. It is now possible to traverse from the Pabilany cenote (W of
the Calimba cenote on the Coba Road) around the Grand Cenote (Sac Actun),
Cenote Esqueleto (Temple of Doom), Cenote Naval, Cenote Abejas, Cenote
Nohoch Kin, bypass Manati, press on to Balancanche, Cenote Nohoch Nah
Chich, pass by the Dinner Hole Cenote, and end up in the Dirty Dog or Pet
Cemetery Cenotes. In straight line distance, that's a bit over 10
kilometers. But there's 152,975 meters (501,887 feet) of cave to look at on
the way. As Sac Actun was 14,300 meters (47,000 feet) longer than Nohoch
Nah Chich at the time of connection, following cave naming convention the
entire cave will now be known as Sistema Sac Actun. When examinimg an area
overview it is apparant that the last four years of exploration have had a
radical impact on the appearance of the coastal drainage patterns and may
well require a rethink on the hydrology of the area as well as showing the
extremely high degree of connectivity in this karst aquifer. Robbie and I
both hope that our work will be useful for scientists and conservationists
seeking to learn more about this unique and fragile environment and get it
the protection it deserves. Regards, Steve Bogaerts. (via NSS Forum -
http://www.caves.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3712 )

Related WCN articles:

Breaking news from the Quintana Roo Speleological Survey. (multilingual)
http://www.zenas.gr/site/home/eng_detail.asp?iData=5519

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Worldwide Caving News
http://www.zenas.gr/WCN



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