Diving Hole-in-the-Wall Cave in Florida!

Coming up, Jonathan and Todd explore a mysterious cave hidden within a big pond in Florida. Welcome to Jonathan Bird's Blue World! Merritt's Mill Pond in Marianna, Florida is filled with crystal clear water that originates at Jackson Blue Spring. But this diver's paradise actually has seven diveable caves within its waters. Located about an hour west of Tallahassee, Merritt's Mill Pond is actually a long skinny section of dammed up river. We start our day getting our tanks filled at Cave Adventurers, Ed Sorensen's awesome dive shop right on the pond. Then we load our pontoon boat and head out to find Hole-in-the-Wall Cave. We know basically where it is, and unlike Gator Hole, Hole-in-the-Wall Cave is pretty popular. It has a dock nearby that we can use to find it. To a non-cave diver, a dock in the middle of nowhere probably makes no sense. But it's right next to the cave. It's important to point out that we've never been here before, and we're not here with Ed or someone that knows the site, so we're assuming that that is the cave, right next to this thing we can tie up to. With our boat tied up, Todd and I start putting our gear together. Soon we begin the dive. Normally Todd and I dive with a third diver who handles the lines so we can focus on filming. But today it's just the two of us, so I'm holding Todd's camera as he runs the reel. The beginning of the cave has an incredible chimney that drops straight down to more than 50 feet from just behind the stop sign. Down at the bottom of the chimney, Todd ties our reel into the main line. Once that's done, he can take his camera and off we go. The cave is quite murky today, so it's hard to illustrate just how large some of the rooms are. They go on beyond visibility. Much of the floor of this cave consists of extremely fine silt, so we have to be very careful to stay up away from the bottom. This makes filming a cave crayfish really hard. I have to basically float upside down with my feet way up high to film this little guy without kicking up a storm. Every time we leave a large room and the passage gets smaller, it opens back up again into another huge room. This cave is enormous. We swim past shelf-like formations that were clearly formed when the water was lower. This cave's passages go on for thousands of feet, but it's pretty deep, so we don't go too far before it's time to turn around. As we get back near the entrance, we start to see signs of the world above—sticks and organic material that have worked their way into the cave. We pass through a medium-sized restriction, and then back into the chamber at the base of the chimney. Now I'm carrying two cameras again while Todd is reeling our line in. We soon emerge back into the cavern zone and see the light of day. Out in the pond, a fishy welcoming committee greets us. Wow! That was a big cave! That is huge! We saw the entrance and I'm like, oh this is going to be a small and really gnarly type cave. And then once you get through that beginning, it just goes BOOM and it's like WHOA! It's just room after room after room of huge caves. Hole in the Wall Cave is a famous and popular dive in Merritt's Mill Pond. For our first dive there, the visibility was not great, so we didn't go too far. But this means that we're ready for a much further exploration on our next trip to this part of the Blue World. Hey everyone! Did you know that you now can become a Blue World member? Hit the JOIN button down below and get access to cool perks like custom badges, early access to new videos, your name in the credits, and more!