Diving underground, underwater into Devil's Den
 

One way to deal with the heat, diving into the Devil's Den in northwest Florida ...

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CLICK PHOTO FOR FULL SIZED IMAGE

A strange place in northwest Florida. Looking at the bizarre trees
intertwined over Devil's Den or a sinkhole in formation.



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Don't fall in. Doubt wildlife managed that all the time back in the day before the fences went up. Warm Mineral Springs reportedly resembled this, thousands of years back. Only in that case the hole was about 400 ft. deep, filled with mist and vines. Saber cats, ground sloth's and the like fell in and were entombed in the anaerobic sediments there. History repeats, on a smaller scale.



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Walking into the grotto for some free diving and at $9. a head it is an incredible bargain for a truly unique experience. The water is a refreshing 72 F, so bring your wetsuit. Kept fogging my lens up.



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Entering the grotto. The camera image makes things look a lot brighter than they are. Still, you can see the brilliant wall coloring, deep blue water more readily this way. It is a fairly large, hemispherical chamber caused by the gradual failure and subsidence of underlying limestone. One of these days most of the roof will fall in and the bottom slip out below resulting in a full blown hour glass shaped sinkhole. No time too soon ideally.



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They've constructed a stagging platform for divers to gear up on, to avoid silting the place out. You can free dive it but pay attention to the skull and crossbones signs at the mouths of the secondary caves. Also watch your head on ascent to avoid smacking into some of those inverted walls. For folks wanting to penetrate with SCUBA, make sure you are fully NACD qualified for the dive. Too many lost souls in the cave systems of Florida as it is. That is lunch easing down through the skylight for a group of spelunking cows expected in the afternoon.



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A truly remarkable place, recommend checking it out. They even have a pool area and campground. I shot some poor quality,
likely surreal video, may put up a clip to show you things underwater.


More info at:
http://www.devilsden.com/




Video from one of the more bizarre dives in Florida, Devil's Den. Located along the northwest coast around Ocala, it is worth checking out. Apologies for some of the video, poor cameras were pushed beyond reasonable limits in low light. Still, there is some unusual imagery in there. The viz. was actually better than implied in the clip.