Florida, USA

Florida is one of the foundational regions of modern cave diving. North-central limestone conduits are parts of the Floridan aquifer, not isolated sporting caves. River stage can reverse flow, tannic water can invade clear systems, and access conditions can change rapidly. Tourist springs, cavern-training sites, full caves, research systems and drinking-water conduits may all occupy the same watershed.

Florida cave diving predates formal organisations. NSS-CDS history records John Harper and Joe Fuller making a 1,000-foot penetration and roughly 2,000-foot traverse at Hornsby Sink in 1962. Sheck Exley became central to the next generation, articulating the Rule of Thirds by 1968 and later systematising accident analysis in Basic Cave Diving: Blueprint for Survival.

The NSS Cave Diving Section formed in 1973 with Exley as first chairman. Florida exploration and accident analysis helped drive line arrows, reels, staging, sidemount, lighting, DPVs, decompression habitats, mapping and formal search/recovery practice.

• ›Manatee Springs — 5+ miles mapped; park explicitly separates open-water, cavern and cave zones; Friedman Sink requires full cave certification.
• ›Madison Blue — cave/cavern certification, two-person minimum, no solo, no DPVs and time restrictions under park rules.
• ›Ginnie Springs / Devil’s Eye-Ear — private high-flow training complex; strict No Lights rule separates ordinary recreation from overhead penetration.
• ›Little River Springs — historic Exley staging/long-range site and continuing training cave.
• ›Blue Hole / Jug Spring, Ichetucknee — compact high-flow cave; only park spring where scuba is allowed and overhead certification is required for the vent.

Falmouth-Cathedral is a long, relatively low-visibility Suwannee County system with specialist survey around 33,552 ft and maximum depth around 160 ft. Sheck Exley pushed Cathedral beyond 10,900 ft in 1990; modern exploration resumed after 2003 and extended beyond 17,000 ft penetration from Cathedral.

Dye tracing indicates wider hydrological relationships toward Ellaville/Falmouth and the Edwards-Suwanneecoochee system. It is an exploration project, not a casual training cave.

Weeki Wachee lies beneath one of Florida’s best-known tourist springs but is a research cave exceeding 400 ft depth. A 2014 exploration presentation listed 17,825 ft total length and 407 ft maximum depth. Jamie Stone and Sheck Exley bottomed the spring against extreme flow in 1980; later work expanded the system and confirmed its status as the deepest known freshwater cave in the USA.

Troy Spring is a ~70 ft first-magnitude spring with open-water diving and a Civil War-era steamboat wreck, but unstable/collapsed caverns mean the cave is not treated as a cave-diving site. Florida Caverns State Park is a major dry show-cave landscape rather than a public underwater-cave destination.

Florida cave maps are aquifer maps. Dye tracing, flow measurement, water sampling and survey show how surface sinks, rivers, springs and deep conduits connect. Major threats include nitrate enrichment, sewage/septic loading, agricultural contamination, groundwater withdrawal, river-stage changes, erosion and direct cave damage.

Conservation data and access rules therefore belong on the cave catalogue itself rather than in an appendix.

• ›Peacock — active state park; certified cavern/cave teams, no solo, instructor permits for classes.
• ›Manatee — active state park with open-water/cavern/cave zones separated.
• ›Madison Blue — active state park; two-person minimum and no DPVs.
• ›Ginnie — private commercial access with overhead/light restrictions.
• ›Wakulla / WKPP and Weeki Wachee — research/restricted, not routine public cave diving.
• ›Falmouth-Cathedral — controlled project access.
• ›Cow, School Sink and Mill Creek — managed advanced/restricted access.
• ›Troy Spring — open-water only; unstable cave not catalogued as cave-diving destination.

• ›NSS-CDS — history, accident analysis, gold-line history, managed properties and standards
• ›Florida State Parks — Peacock, Manatee, Madison Blue, Ichetucknee, Wakulla, Weeki Wachee and Troy Spring
• ›Southwest Florida Water Management District — Weeki Wachee
• ›WKPP — 1990s exploration, later connections and Chip’s Hole
• ›Karst Underwater Research — Falmouth-Cathedral
• ›Ginnie Springs — Devil’s Spring System
• ›Suwannee Parks — Little River Springs
• ›Jackson County / local sources — Jackson Blue and cave-diving district
• ›Florida DEP / Florida Geological Survey — springs and aquifer context