Day 1, Saturday the 12th August

As I crossed the Escambia Bay Bridge, eyes still crusty from the pre-dawn wakeup, I heard the familiar chime of a text message. I reach for my phone, open it and try to focus without success. Rubbing my eyes, I try again and see the message from my buddy Dave who's on his way south from Atlanta. "I'm running a little late, let's make it 9?". My eyes shift up to my dashboard and glance at the clock. 6:26am. I continue my gaze towards the GPS and I spy the "ETA 8:22am". The last passing thought before drifting back into my vegetative driving state is "Well, I guess I'm not going to be late anymore".

About an hour later, the "energize" ring on my phone snaps me out of my daze; the telltale ring tone reserved for my dive buddies.

"Whereya at?", Dave asks me as I stick my headset in my ear.

Thankfully my new GPS gives me the answer quickly, "Looks like I'm about 30 miles west of Rt. 276, so I'm on pace to be at Cave Adventurers around 8:15 or so". Dave glances at his and relays his 9:26am estimate.

Now that I've woken up a bit, at least enough to think somewhat outside the box, I ask "We're just stopping at Edd's to pick up that deco bottle you forgot last weekend, right"? Dave responds affirmatively and I continue my thought, "Do you have to go out of your way to get there? I can stop and grab it and meet you somewhere else, since I'm plenty ahead".

"Yea, it's a bit out of my way, you got the numbers"? He answers.

"I got 'em, I'll grab the tank and meet you at the boat ramp".

With a new plan in place, Dave's familiar Australian "Cheers, Mate" valediction comes through the phone, and I hang up with my typical "yep, later man".

Following the directions from my GPS, I find my way to the site, pulling off the road where Dave had described the ramp should be at. The land is a good 25 feet above the river, with absolutely no way to put a boat in, short of just tossing it off the bridge and into the water. As I look around, I notice a dirt road running off to my right, downstream along the riverbank.

I follow the road for a couple miles, stopping and checking each break in the trees; only to find old campfire sites, rope swings to launch swimmers off the high embankment into the river, and copious amounts of empty beer bottles and cans strewn about the area. The road ends in a dead end, with a small parking area, and another party site clearing on my left, toward the river. Not knowing anything about the boat that Dave was bringing down, I scope the site out a little more, thinking we may be able to carry it to the water, but there won't be any way to actually back a trailer down.

As I continue to inspect the site, I walk down to the waters edge and peer upstream. "Well, so much for this idea" I think, as I glance up 100 yards to the short set of rapids that would be virtually impossible to get past short of a portage. I returned to my car and gave Dave a call, "trust me dude, there's absolutely no way we're getting the boat in here. We'll have to find another way. I'll see what I can find".

I run up the blank area on my map with the pointer [I really need the topographic maps for my new toy], looking for roads that terminate where I would assume the river to be. Finding one that hits the east bank about three quarters of a mile north of our target, I plot out a route and head off... only to find myself staring at gate across the dirt road I need to travel on plastered with "private property, no trespassing" signs. No problem, I had a second place to try as well, a little farther up the river.

Turning around and back north, I come to a dirt road on the left and notice the wonderful beacon that is a public boat launch sign. For an unknown reason I tap the "Mark" button as I turn onto what my GPS only has named as "road", and head down it.

The road winds through the woods for almost a mile before rounding a bend and opens up to a parking lot. To my left I notice a couple of pick-ups with empty trailers. Straight ahead there is a few cars, and a couple of trucks unloading inflated inner tubes for a day of river drifting, and just to the right I spy a truck backing down a cement ramp, preparing to deposit their trailer and aluminum jon boat into the water.

I immediately call Dave. "I got one, about a mile and a half up river". "Onya Mate" [or some other weird Australian expression] comes back, followed with "I'll call back when I'm off the interstate, cheers!"

After about 20 minutes Dave calls back, "whereya at?". "Let me just give you the numbers", and I ramble off the latitude and longitude of my current location.

"There's nothing there", he says.

"Oh! Hey, I marked the turn off the main road. Hold on...", as I dig through my mess of waypoints in my GPS. Finding what I'm looking for, I rattle off the numbers for the turnoff and tell him to keep his eyes open for a boat launch sign.

I killed off the time waiting by walking up a shallow creek that fed into the river next to the ramp, and then chatted with some of the locals about artifact collection; as I noticed one group had a few scuba tanks on their boat that they were putting in. It seems there is a lot of diving along the river, but all searching for Indian arrowheads and other artifacts; no one really knew of any caves in the area. One, however, talked about a spring that was down the river a little ways.

Dave's jeep rounded the bend, emerging from a cloud of dust kicked up from the road. As I caught sight of the boat trailered behind him, my mind instantly raced with thoughts of "oh ****ing hell, we're screwed!". I was expecting a jon boat, yet he's towing with him an 18 foot Sea Ray with a 90 horse engine! "This should prove to be entertaining", I think as I look back down the shallow river as well as take notice of the scores of locals staring at the boat with a look of shock... Since the river is down at least a few feet.

After some progressive dunks into the water, making sure that there's at least a fair chance we'll be able to get the boat back on the trailer and up the ramp if we don't end up stuck in some shallow section, we finally had the confidence to free the boat from it's captivity on the trailer. We decided to just scope out the area, and loaded up my old wetsuit, my fins, a bastardized version of my single tank rig to serve as a simplistic side-mount setup in order to carry an 80 cubic foot aluminum stage bottle, a reel, a backup light, my swimsuit and my booties. Making sure the motor started up, we shoved off and headed downstream.

After only a couple hundred feet we found a very shallow section with some rapids, but thankfully there was deeper water to the right, under some trees. We worked our way over there, crossed our fingers and shot through that section, ducking as the wakeboard tower smashed through the branches above.

...and they love to go for a ride when your boat smacks a tree, especially when looking up into said tree and noticing it is just filled with dozens of these damn things, each with their own little stake of web space.

I walked back from the bow where I was watching for logs and rocks, to see no less than 5 spiders frantically setting up webs around the boat; one giant banana spider was preparing to use Dave's head as an anchor point for his web, along with the tower above him. Slightly freaked out, but mostly just wanting to get these ers off the boat, I head to the stern and pull out my scuba fin. "Duck!" I say to Dave as I choke up on my fin, using it as a bat to smack the spider overboard. I finish up cracking the spiders back to the shore, breathe a sigh of relief, and go back to my anti-grounding duties.

As we travel downstream we notice quite an abundance of pockmarked sandstone ledges and cliffs, both on the embankment and under the surface through the amazingly clear river water; allowing us decent viewing of anything within 8 feet of the surface when the glare of the sun isn't reflecting off the water. We identified a number of different places where I'd be jumping in and swimming along looking for holes.

We finally came to the general area we were heading for, and began scanning the shore for any signs of interest. We inched up on one low section of the embankment, and noticed the river bottom drop away into a dark blue shadow cast by the limestone ledge that jutted out just inches below the surface.

We tied up to some stumps on the shore and I wrestled into my wetsuit. I grabbed my booties, my mask and fins, and jumped into the warm river water that had been baking in the heat all summer. As I approached the area where the river bottom dropped off, I recognized a familiar distortion in the water, much like the waves of heat you can see in the distance when looking up a road on a hot day. I took a deep breath and dived down towards the shadow, realizing it wasn't actually a shadow but rather the dancing effect of a thermocline dividing the crystal clear spring water with the muddier river water.

The temperature of the river was close to 80 degrees, so as I dove through the thermocline I felt a chill run through my body as I passed into the 71 degree river water. Looking under the ledge I see an opening at least 7 feet in diameter and 4 feet tall, hidden from the surface by the ledge coming out from the shore.

Surfacing, I swim back towards the boat and pull the mask off my face. "Dave, I think we got something here, Grab my wing and tank, and give me my camera!".

After a couple breaths I felt a hollow suck of an empty tank, as in my haste I never bothered to turn it on! Reaching to the valve I turned it, took a good strong breath to make sure all was well, turned on my light and swam in against the light flow that was coming out.

"****in'-A dude!", I exclaimed as I tossed my camera to Dave as he stood watch on the boat. "We need our gear"!!! Dave found a shady spot to scroll through the pictures on my camera while I wrestled out of my gear and tossed it into the boat. He handed my camera back with a gleam in his eye while I climbed aboard and he rushed to the console to fire up the engine. He was practically pulling away as I untied the bow line, gave the boat a little push and jumped back on. I removed my wetsuit and was changing out of my swim trunks, wrapped only in a towel when we felt the thud of the prop strike the river bottom. "Dude, the cave ain't going anywhere!" I exclaimed as I recovered my fallen towel and shook off images of floating naked down the river after getting tossed overboard and run over by the boat in his haste. As I completed the challenging act of dressing with a maniac at the wheel, we rounded a bend in the river and came upon a set of tubers who we had been talking with as we loaded the boat earlier. They looked surprised and asked if we were done already. "Nope, we just need more gear!". Moving at a crawl under the trees with the dreaded spiders looking for an opening to mount a freefall assault onto our heads, we tacked back and forth through the shallow section. The boat ramp, 100 yards ahead, taunting us as we slowly navigated the choke point in the river against the strong current. Finally clearing the rapids, we cruised over and tied up to a rock, practically running up to the cars to get our doubles and drysuits. I backed my car down the boat ramp, loaded up my stuff from the car to the boat, then drove back up to Dave's jeep and transported his tanks down to the boat as well, fielding the inquisitive questions from the masses playing in the water, all assuming we were extremely over prepared for Indian artifact collection. I returned my car to the parking lot and rushed back down to the boat, fearing Dave may forget his buddy in his excitement. Dave tapped his foot with the engine running as I pulled in the lines and we shoved off. Having done the trip once before we managed to make record time back down to the site after finding all the stumps and shallows on the first trip. Briskly skirting the rapids, I went through another round of spider baseball with the latest crop of stowaways as Dave accelerated and deftly avoided sunken logs and other spider infested low-hanging branches. "Port dude! turn to port!" I exclaimed as I noticed the creativity of one webbed beast, hanging on a 20 foot long thread of silk, 6 feet above the water directly in the path of Dave's face. As we zoomed by the inventive spider, I swear I caught a glimpse of her hanging there with one thumb pointed skyward and the dejected look of a jilted hitchhiker in his beady little eyes. She's lucky I didn't have a flashback to my juvenile days of mailbox bashing or she would have received more of a ride then originally intended. Arriving in one piece and free of Lolth's loyal subjects, we pulled over to the submerged spring, tied the boat a little more securely then before, and began the tedious task of gearing up in the blazing Floridian summer heat. After a few dunks in the river to cool off, we donned our rigs and clambered out of the boat. Our tubing friends floated over to us as we continued our gear preps while cooling down in the river, asking all sorts of questions. We fielded their questions as best we could without becoming too distracted from our preparations. Appeasing them, they drifted off while wishing us luck and safe dives. We rolled through our pre-dive checks as another group of tubers floated by, peering at us with confused looks in silence, as we surely looked out of place with big bright lights overpowering the glare of the sun as they hung from our chest d-rings; drysuits in the 80 degree river water and air temps in the high 90s; massive 110 pound double steel tank setups on our backs as we kneeled in 4 foot deep river water. Completing all our checks, we descended under the water's surface and drifted downstream to the cool blast of 69 degree spring water spitting out of the cavern entrance, myself in the lead and Dave just behind and to my left. I tied my reel in, pushed forward, placed a secondary tie-off, lead in and turned right towards the rope that ran into the large passage. Tying my reel into the rope there, I checked to make sure Dave was cool and we set off into the unknown. I opted to leave my camera behind [sorry folks, next time], but Dave brought his reel in case we needed to repair the old exploration line that we assumed would be in place. We rounded the bend in the passageway and continued to follow the rope past a flooded jug it was tied to, until the passageway dropped through a hole in the floor. All along that stretch of 10 foot high passageway we passed a number of the giant flathead catfish. Unlike the catfish that frequent other caves in the area, these hardly even noticed our presence, and definitely didn't shy away as we came upon them, opting for a bold approach and stare down, including one that basically tried to ram my leg. The smallest one I spied was at least 2 feet in length, with the biggest being well over 3 feet. Thankfully they didn't trash the silty floor in a scurry to bolt, as the ones in Twin Caves and Hole in the Wall seem to enjoy doing. The rope was tied off to a rock where #24 braided nylon exploration line extended off to our right, into the dark recesses of a small passage littered with rough black rocks. With another check of Dave, I headed down the low black walled passageway, against a decent amount of water flow, without much more then a foot of clearance above our backs and a only a couple feet between us and the walls on either side. Finning was tedious against the flow, afraid for the mess that would get kicked up as I worked forward, so I opted to try and pull myself along with my hands, gaining enough purchase on the largest of the loose rocks strewn about. I thought I noticed Dave's light flash behind me, and I glanced back as best I could in the tight confines and checked if he was ok. He said he was, and I continued on. After at least 100 feet of passage that thankfully wasn't pinching down any smaller, I once again checked on an apparent flash from Dave. Glancing back I caught the motion of his hazy finger signaling to turn around. As I made my turn in the cramped quarters, I noticed the passageway behind me was cloudy and quite silted up. Not so much that I couldn't see the line, but visibility was hampered enough from the clear water ahead of us that it was immediately evident as to why Dave turned the dive. I stuck to his heels as we drifted back to where the rope tied into the exploration line. Ascending up the hole we continued along the larger passage back to the first bend, where Dave stopped above the flooded jug used as a placement for the rope to run around the corner. Hovering there, Dave gestured towards a passageway that ran to our left, perpendicular to where we traveled. He fished out his reel, cleared a small tangle in it and tied in. Pulling it taught, his line immediately snapped. I ascended up to the ceiling to stay out of his way and keep my light shining down on his project as he unsheathed his knife, cut off the damaged section, and repaired the line on his reel. He tied in again and began fishing through his pockets. Guessing he was searching for a line arrow, I reached into my pocket and retrieved my set and handed them to him. He grabbed one, placed it on the line pointing back towards the cavern, and we set off into the passageway to our left. It curved to the left and was quickly became smaller than the dark passage with the exploration line. After 15 feet or so the cave pinched down even smaller, and Dave's fins began to loom towards my face as he backed himself out of the choke point. I backed up to a point I could turn around, and headed back to the rope we jumped off of, while Dave reeled up the line and cleaned up the jump. Dave retook the lead, I untied my reel from the rope, and we checked the other two small passageways. One as I observed before was just a small alcove, not much more then 8 feet long. The other went a little farther before the ceiling and the floor pinched to a point where the passage was no longer navigable. With a look of disdain, Dave reluctantly flittered his thumb around, with the all too familiar signal of "I really don't want to leave, but maybe we should put this one in the books and come back later". Agreeing, I gave him a confident abort signal, and we exited the cavern, returning to the world of normal sized fish and drunken tubers. Surfacing, we looked at each other. Dave broke out with "Holy Fuck! The percolation was so bad from our bubbles hitting the ceiling, all I could see was silt and a cascade of small rocks breaking loose! We definitely need to talk about this plan a little bit more". We spent the next 20 minutes discussing procedures and plans. Nailing everything down in stone, touch contact, zero vis procedures, signals, line awareness, checking and double checking the condition of the line, clearing any line traps, etc... We made absolutely sure we were on the page, and comfortable with returning into the catfish infested abyss. We nailed everything down for our next dive, with the distinct understanding that we could very likely be finding our way out by feel alone. We made sure that we both were completely prepared for that possibility and confident that we'd be successful in returning. With our I's dotted, and our T's crossed, I instructed Dave to take the lead on this one, and we dropped back into the wondrous new world we discovered. We descended from the surface of the river, out of the blazing sun, and drifted with the current back to the cave entrance, Dave in the lead while I held back a few feet as he placed the primary tie-off with his reel. Easing into the crystal clear cave, Dave made his secondary tie-off and drawing a circle with his light beam, asked if I was okay. I Responded affirmatively and we swam to the right and returned to the rope that lead into the realm of the giant catfish. Dave tied the reel into the rope and with another quick circle of his light on the wall in front of me, I replied in kind, and we slowly swam along the passageway. The sediment that was suspended in the water after the first dive had fallen to the floor during our surface interval, and the cave was once again crystal clear as far as our powerful lights could penetrate. The percolation that resulted from our bubbles had dislodged some of the silt on the ceiling on the previous dive, so our exhaled gas didn't have near the drastic result as before. We passed through the hole into the floor, onto the exploration line, and into the small tight dark tunnel we had aborted in during the last dive. Working our way slowly and cautiously through that passageway, I tried to stay close to Dave, close enough to be able to grab his leg if anything happened. A couple of times I ended up too close, and received a fin kick to the face for it, dislodging my regulator from my mouth once. Shifting over to my left alleviated that problem while still being close enough to grab him, as well as still being in easy reach of the line which I kept track of as we continued our crawl. Not far beyond the point where we reached on the previous dive, the floor of the passageway dropped down a few more feet, and opened up both vertically and horizontally. The black walls replaced by soft tan and brown colored sandstone and clay that spanned the earthy color spectrum, the ceiling a rough knobby sandstone, and the floor a collection of sandstone, silt, and clay. The twisting passageway rolled up and down; over large boulders, around pillars of rock jutting down from the ceiling, frequent occurances of low points requiring us to arching our backs and slip under. We swam cautiously, constantly aware of the direction our fins would force water as we propelled ourselves, to prevent disturbing the fragile and unforgiving environment. We ascended a breakdown pile, a pile of stone that collapsed from the ceiling and wall sometime in the past, and found ourselves in a comparatively large room, 7 feet tall and at least 20 feet in diameter, with distinctive stratification lines on the walls near the ceiling. I noticed a red arrow on the line with the name "Watson" written along the bottom, pointing in the direction we came from. To my left, a short distance away, I caught sight of another guideline tied to a rock, and descending down the side of the breakdown pile. Slowly swimming to it, I peaked down the side of the pile and saw the line duck under the wall and into a side passageway. Turning back, I communicated the path of that line to Dave, and we continued along the mainline, since there was no need to explore any side passages on this dive as long as the main line continued. We entered into another room, deceptively small at first glance, distorted by large piles of silt, creating a canyon effect that the main line ran through. A blue plastic line arrow was affixed to the line in the middle of the room, and I spied another jump to the left, running along the wall behind us. The side passage angled up and over a couple silt banks, and then curved along the left wall and going into a parallel corridor, while the mainline curved slightly to the right, passing under the edge of a large stone overhang. Taking care to not disturb the silt with my fins as I rounded the corner, I reached down and pulled myself along, with my right hand finding purchase on a knobby chunk of sandstone on the floor. The sandstone in the cave was incredibly delicate, more than I've ever experienced before. It had a soapy feel to it, and very rough as opposed to the smooth stone one might find in Madison Blue and elsewhere. I could feel the rough parts flake off to my touch. Combining that with the impressive clay banks stacked throughout the passage, I knew that care was of utmost importance inside this fragile environment. We continued to follow the line further, past another jump on the left which I presumed to be the back end of the parallel passageway that I noticed in the room with the large silt mounds. We had penetrated at least 1000 feet by this point, and the sight of another flathead catfish this far in caught me off guard. Most catfish tend to stay near the cave entrance, and even in some of the caves that have grown more popular and they apparently follow diver's lights, resulting in me finding them farther in than normal, they still stay relatively close to the entrance. I don't recall ever seeing a catfish this deep inside a cave. I'm not sure if it indicated there was an entrance close by, or if it was due to their apparent residence in the cave as opposed to only staying in the cave during the winter months, when the river water becomes too cold for their comfort. However there weren't any apparent signs of an obvious entrance in that area, so I'm not entirely sure what the fish was doing that far back. Another jump appeared on the right hand side of the passageway, it jumped off at a slight angle, more heading forward then a perpendicular tunnel. It appeared fairly large, as large as the main passage, and I think was a side passage that ran parallel to the mainline for a couple hundred yards, much like the previous jump apparently did. As we went through another duck under and up a silty slope, Dave's hand inadvertently brushed the left side of the cave, against a very large outcropping of stone. I stared in disbelief as the whole outcropping came tumbling down... 3 large rocks falling within inches of him, within only a couple yards of me. At least 300 pounds of stone that just broke free with the gentlest brush! I wasn't even positive that his hand even touched the side, as it could have even been the effect of his bubbles striking the rock as he passed. Thankfully he wasn't directly underneath when it let go, a strike from those sized stones would have severely injured him, at best. Hearing the sound of the collapse, Dave turned and noticed the rocks sitting within the erupting silt cloud, his eyes wide as saucers and I swear I saw a wisp of brown liquid leak out his drysuit dump valve. We hovered and stared for several moments, wondering if that really just happened. Finally we both shrugged it off as best we could and decided to continue on. Within a very short distance from that point, we came to a minor restriction that was large enough for divers to pass on the left, but very small for backmount divers to the right, the direction that the line ran. We had been very careful to inspect the line through this whole dive, and this was the first major line trap we had encountered, a location in the cave where it would be impossible for a diver to stay in touch contact with the line and be able to pass cleanly through the cave. Dave hovered ahead of me while I spent some time trying to move the line over to a rock on the very edge of the passable section. The line kept getting hung up on a knob jutting down from the ceiling on the far side of the restriction, and I couldn't quite get it free to allow me to place the line where it would be easier to follow in the event of any emergencies. Dave looked ahead, then rotated back towards and signaled for us to turn around and head out. He later described the section of cave beyond that point as an absolutely incredible clay embankment, with stratification layers from bottom to top, and very low clearance that would have posed a challenge to pass that point without damaging the bank of clay. Given the collapse earlier, he decided that it was just too beautiful to risk it on that dive, and being somewhere in the vicinity of 1500 to 2000 feet back, it was probably a good time to end the dive anyway. So I left the line trap behind, and we began a leisurely drift out. The visibility was only hampered by the percolation of our exhaust bubbles for about 100 feet after we turned around. After that point the crystal clear spring water returned, the time between entry and egress being long enough for the silt to settle out of suspension. I became much more aware of the multitude of breakdown piles throughout the passage as we exited, large jumbled stacks of stone that broke off the wall and ceiling of the cave as the passing water chewed away at the soft sandstone, weakening the bonds enough that their own weight finally released the stones from the cave walls and tumbled to the floor. I never gave much thought to how long it had been since a breakdown pile had formed, always just assuming "a long time ago" and never concerning myself with one forming right on top of me. Gazing at the vast number of breakdown piles around the cave, I realized exactly how lucky we had been that the minor collapse we experienced was minimal, it very easily could have been a much larger amount of stone; blocking our path out, or trapping us under rock. I shook off the thoughts of "what if?" as we continued our egress; taking note of all the different formations, peering down side passages and inspecting the jumps as we came upon them. Looking for other side leads, and just appreciating the shear beauty of a system free of marred clay banks, damaged by prop scars, hand prints, initials and other graffiti. A system free of disturbed silt mounds. An underground river free of the common signs of the high traffic "tourist" caves. Drifting back through the final tunnel towards the exit, I caught a glimpse of the ambient glow from the outside world through a small window in the rock on the left side wall, just past the jug marked curve. Pressing my light to my chest, the area became cast in shadows, defined by a dull cobalt blue glow from the light outside. I glanced back, uncovering my light for my final lighting duty as Dave unties his reel from the rope, and starts reeling up our guideline. He tucked his light away and I reach back and flick mine off, using the ambient light to guide us while we appreciate last few minutes. I drifted over to the secondary tie-off, unwrap it and took up the slack while Dave reeled it in, and I glance out the cavern opening. I noticed a strange rope running vertically up from the bottom of the river. As I stared quizzically at it, it vanishes back to the surface with a small lead anchor on tow. I turned back to Dave and told him to keep his eyes peeled, and making sure he was clear of any trouble spots as I eased my way toward the open water. We had been underwater for just short of an hour and I instantly became concerned that our boat was being ransacked or otherwise screwed with. As I looked up toward the surface I saw the bottom of a jon boat with an electric trolling motor, moving clear of the water above the cavern entrance, as well as a couple rafts floating about. Ascending quickly, I surfaced amidst a small group of rafters and a couple older guys in their fishing boat. They exclaimed how cool it was seeing the bubbles emerge, and watch the silver tanks slowly drift out. They had noticed the empty boat, assumed we were inside the cave and had waited, wanting to make sure we exited ok. Dave surfaced soon after and we all engaged in a discussion about the cave, it's history, the flathead catfish, what we saw, what we didn't see, etc.

We hauled ourselves back into the boat, getting out of our gear and hanging up our suits and undergarments while we chatted with the locals. Real nice people, and it's always worthwhile to chat with the locals as you never know what gem of a lead you'll pick up in the conversations, but I just wasn't quite ready for reality yet as I preferred to bask in the euphoric glow of a great dive. They finally went on their way and Dave and I flopped down on the benches of the boat. Reaching into my cooler I pulled out a couple beers, cracked them open, handed one to Dave. "Cheers!" as we clicked bottles and took swigs. "Wow" escaped under our breaths as we both tipped our heads back and finished our drinks, taking a little time to reflect on an incredible dive in silence, before returning to the realities above water.