And yet, ironically, no one seems to be worried about the upcoming dive. In the lush and tangled hammock creeping in around the entry sinkhole, Jill and Tom joke about the trail of underwater trash and refuse they'll be able to follow if their natural orientation fails them, while the rest of the production crew quietly prepares their gear. For Russell and I, both modest recreational divers with no cave experience whatsoever, the calm is unnerving. It's as if Jill and Tom are about to take dip in the local pool.

Once the dive is underway, however, there are no more jokes. Jill and Tom's time underwater is measured in breaths, not minutes. With over 200 feet of solid limestone separating them from the surface, the data from today's dive might as well be from the dark side of the moon.

Using Technology to Map the Caves

The strategy of mapping underwater cave systems to estimate their relative location within a specific springshed in itself is nothing new. But today, Wes and his team are producing more than just "estimates". Using Brian Pease's pioneering radio telemetry technology, we'll be able to follow Jill and Tom's underground journey between the sinkholes on the surface in real time. If Wes' assumptions about the route of the conduit are correct, it's a journey that will take the dive team under Interstate 75, a stormwater retention basin of a motel, and below the salad bar of a local restaurant.

For those who continue to doubt the impacts of human activity on the aquifer beneath them, it also means no more excuses. Over the next three hours following Brian with the radio tracking device, our journey above the divers takes us across gas lines, highways, agricultural fields, retention basins, and right up to the loading dock of an industrial facility where dozens of barrels of who-knows-what sit just a few feet away from a stormwater drain. For Wes, Brian and the rest of the team, the journey is bittersweet: though the radio tracking equipment has worked flawlessly throughout the dive, the impacts of humanity on the underground conduit connecting the two sinks are much worse than they ever imagined. Even more frightening, notes Wes, is where the water's going — into our drinking water and the springs themselves.

By the time we arrive at the second sink in the late afternoon, Brian's receiver brings us our first bit of good news: Jill and Tom have completed their required decompression stops in the ascending conduit leading to the exit out of the sinkhole and are within minutes of surfacing. Down at the bottom of the sinkhole where the film crew has set up cameras to film the divers' arrival back to earth, it's as if a set designer had created the perfect stage for the climax to today's scene. There is trash and debris everywhere.

"It's the classic example of a 'go-away' hole," laments Wes. "People think they're getting rid of their garbage by dumping it in the sinkhole, but what they don't realize is that they're putting it right into their drinking water and the water where their children swim. Hopefully, the data from today's dive will start to change all that."

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