BSAC TRAVEL CLUB - Trip Reports - Florida Ginnie Springs

TRAVEL CLUB

DIVING GINNIE SPRINGS, FLORIDA

By Alison Boler

Ginnie Springs is probably the most famous fresh water spring dive in the world. Well loved by both open water divers and cave divers, it is the Queen of the Florida springs and attracts many thousands of divers year round.

Ginnie Springs is in the north west of the state about 2.5 hours drive from Orlando or the Gulf Resorts, about 4.5 hours from Fort Lauderdale. It's an easy drive - motorway nearly all the way. The nearest town of any size is High Springs where you will find accommodation, restaurants, shops and other dive stores.

We were on holiday in Florida and decided to take a break from boat diving and have a day at the Springs. It sounded like fun diving and we thought it would be a good experience for our daughters, Lucy (14) and Daisy (12).

Ginnie Springs is a large, privately owned, park-like site covering some 200 wooded acres that contains a campsite, picnic areas with barbecue facilities, showers, rental cottage, general store and a full service dive site. You could easily spend a very pleasant weekend here in idyllic rural surroundings. We have found that Americans are really, really good at setting up these sorts of parks: they are invariably spotless and contain all sorts of facilities that a British counterpart wouldn't. There are actually seven springs on site but you can't dive them all.

Activities are not limited to diving. You can swim in the springs and Santa Fe River, you can also kayak and canoe, snorkel and tube - just float relaxingly down stream. On land you can hike about, play volleyball or just enjoy the countryside.

But, it's the diving that has made Ginnie Springs famous and what we were there for. It's a pretty cheap day. It cost us $27 each to spend the day on site and for that price we could dive as much as we liked and use the facilities. We hired tanks and weights and they came to $13 each. Both air and nitrox are available. You could hire every bit of equipment from the excellent dive store if you needed. The staff was really helpful and friendly. Of course you start by signing lots of paper - signing your life away!!! But that's the norm in the U.S. You could book training courses, guided dives or just do your own thing, provided you stay within their rules. These are strict and with good reason. There are hundreds of feet of tunnels leading off the caves and caverns and these are forbidden to all but the trained cave diver. These areas are clearly signed and gridded off. In addition non-cave divers are not permitted to carry torches or strobes or video lights into any cavern other than the main Ginnie Springs cavern as a deterrent against straying further than permitted.

There are 4 or 5 open water dives available to the non-cave diver and we planned to try as many as possible in the day. None of them are particularly deep - about 15m max.

We collected our rental gear and drove down to the main dive site - Ginnie Springs. You can park about 50m from the waters edge and then kit up using the large picnic tables. It was April - Easter - and midweek and we were pleased to find that we were almost the only people there - just one other pair of divers and a distant kayaker.

Ginnie Springs is a large freshwater basin which is roughly circular and measures about 100 feet in diameter and is about 15 - 20 feet deep. It links to the river which flows away from it. The water is glass clear with a silverish tone that comes from the white limestone rock and sand at its base. In the centre of the basin is the entrance to the Ginnie cavern. This is one of the few caverns that can be entered by non-cave trained divers and provides a great insight into the fascination for this type of diving.

There are very good wooden steps and platforms built down to the water - entry could hardly be easier. From the surface you can see every pebble and count the many small fish that were darting about.

The Ginnie Cavern is a two-room area. You enter the upper room through a slit in the bottom of the shallow basin and light illuminates it very well. It is great to look back towards the outside from within the cavern - the water is so clear and the light makes it a particularly vivid blue. We explored the strange cheese-like rock walls and saw the mercury bubbled air lodged in the cavern roof. Although there was plenty of light coming in, you definitely needed a torch. We had one each and several spares.

The lower room is named The Ballroom, and this is the larger of the two. Ginnie Springs literature describes this as "amphitheatre-sized". Well.... I have to say when Bob and I conferred about it afterwards we both thought that the Ballroom was a continuation of the upper room and were searching about for the entrance to The Ballroom. It really isn't that big! Having said that, it is a very interesting dive and you can see various unique Floridian geologic cave features formed in the limestone. At the rear of this part of the cavern is a gridded off hole that links to the deep caves and tunnels beyond. Water pours out into the cavern through this hole and it was fun to swim up to the grid and hang on, feeling the push as 35 million gallons a day of fresh water makes its way up from the earth.

There's a guideline from the grid back to the cavern entrance but I cannot imagine anyone seriously needing it.

So, very enjoyable and we were very glad that we had it almost to ourselves. I don't think it would have been that great if there had been a lot of divers in there. In fact, I think it would have been claustrophobic - Wakulla it isn't!

It was fascinating to see streams of airbubbles permeating through the rock of the basin bed and streaming upwards as we surfaced. The rock is obviously extremely porous.

So, having dried off in the warm sun, we loaded up the Ford Expedition (what a beast!) and drove around to the other diving area - The Devils Springs. This part of the park is home to three deep springs: Little Devil; The Devil's Eyeball and The Devil's Ear. Together these springs produce nearly 80 million gallons of water a day.

It was the same setup as the other site. Plenty of car parking, shower and bath-house, picnic tables and barbecues - lovely wooded surroundings. There were a few more people here - obviously cave divers in training with their instructors. Mostly they were working in the shade on dry runs, but there were a few in the water.

We kitted up and went to explore Little Devil, also known as Devil Spring. This is a four foot wide gash in the bottom of the Santa Fe River at the head of the Devil Spring system run. The gash is about 50 feet long and about the same in depth. Open water divers may enter the spring but they are not allowed to carry any light whatsoever. Again, the water is incredibly clear and the white limestone walls reflect brilliantly. It's not a wide opening. We descended the crack in pairs, the others waiting at the top because it's a tight fit. You have to be very careful not to disturb the sediment which is lodged in the crevices of the walls. Your reward when you reach the bottom of this rock toaster is to look upwards and see not only every freckle on the faces of your companions looking down on you, but also to be able to count the leaves on the surrounding trees! Oddly enough, this tiny dive site impressed us far more than the main spring and it was the one that both girls asked to go back to for a second visit.

Having explored Little Devil we swam about 100m downriver to the Devil's Eyeball. This is a round opening about 20 feet across and 20 feet deep. At the bottom is the entrance to a small and intricately decorated cavern. Beyond this is the cave system which is only accessible to trained cave divers. Beyond the open water cavern in this site and the nearby Devil's Ear lie over 30,000 feet of tunnel which makes them a mecca for visiting cave divers and an ideal environment for cave diver training. Clearly that's what the other visitors were about on the day we were there.

We explored the Devil's Eyeball and peered into the small cavern but without lights it wasn't really enticing. It was much more fun to hover at the bottom and look up.

The Devil's Ear is just a little further down the river. This was probably the most exciting spring of all due to the massive outpouring of water from the bottom where the tunnels begin. It is absolutely massive! You literally have to hold your mask and reg in place and pull yourself hand over hand down the last few feet and it takes everything you have. God knows what it must be like to have to penetrate along the tunnels in the face of that force of water. The spring itself is entered through a canyon-like opening in the river floor. It is very narrow and you go down in a pair - one in front of the other towards the end. I would say it was about 20 feet long, 3 feet wide and about 50 feet deep. I was buddied with my younger daughter and went first. I made it to the cave opening but there was no way she could pull herself that last few metres. However, we enjoyed the view upwards and waved to Bob and Lucy as they looked down.

This spring is at the real junction with the river and it is quite interesting to look up and see the glassy water back in one direction and the tannin stained river water in the other. Where the two areas of water mingle it creates a quite beautiful effect that some people liken to stained glass.

In the summer, you can also drift dive the Santa Fe River (must carry an SMB) but it wasn't suitable the day we were there.

We really enjoyed our trip to Ginnie Springs and would have no hesitation in going back there again. Did it encourage us to train as cave divers? No! But, it did give us a fantastic insight into what it must be like to dive and explore underwater caves. It was especially interesting to see the rock formations carved by the flowing water and to feel the huge force as it burst out of the ground. If we had been inclined to learn cave diving, I can think of no better place to train - everything you need is on hand and in considerable convenience and comfort.

We preferred the Devils Springs to Ginnie Springs itself. I'm not sure why - maybe the main spring is a victim of its own publicity, but we were a bit disappointed in it, on the basis of size. The other springs whilst really tiny were much more exciting and atmospheric, in our opinion anyway.

We all wore 3mm wetsuits and didn't feel in the least bit cold. The air temperature was in the mid 70s and it was a sunny day. The water is a solid 72°F all year round.

I can heartily recommend a trip here. Bring a picnic - or buy one at the shop. Do what the Americans do and make yourself a barbecue after you've dived and turn it into a real day out. You could even consider camping or renting one of the cottages. There are lots of other diveable springs in the area for you to visit from a base here and it's something pretty different from what you might experience elsewhere in the world. The water clarity is unbelievable - it's a job to know where the water ends and the air begins.

Links:
Ginnie Springs Website

Return to FLORIDA