The Pearse Resurgence, New Zealand, January 2011 Expedition

[jdz]

Hi Guys,

We are now able to release some details of our small expedition to this incredible cave system earlier on this year...

We have created a 6 min clip now on Vimeo and also have released our Virtual Cave Dive through the system via a simulator!

You can download it from here.. Pearse Resurgence - Wet Mules

For a bit of added fun... toggle off the guidelines layer by pressing R in the simulator.. see if you can keep yourself from becoming disorientated...

Enjoy and cheers!!

[PeterVICEG]

Over the top! Up here I have done deco in our caves to trivial times in similar temps. I froze! Congrats on a superb effort.

Peter

[kieranu]

Very entertaining video - Craig, the master of understatement as always

Vis-a-vis the HD video, is the slight blocking a result of the compression and rendering process or is that how it looks natively from the camera?

[Packhorse]

Very cool.

[Kieran Hatton]

Fantastic stuff!!

[petemes]

Great work guys. Just be safe ok! No hole in the ground is worth it!!

Pete Mes

[OceanOpportunity]

great stuff...

what are the habitats you are using constructed of?

[jdz]

Hi Michael.

The habitats are what we call IBC Containers. (do a google search and you'll get the idea pretty quickly..)

The ones we used are 1000lts capacity and dimensions, 1.0m x 1.2m x 1.12m.

We cut the top off it to create a tub and we were able to pack a lot of our loose equipment in them for transport to & fro. They also have a tap so that we could empty them later..

As you could image, the lift would be of the order of one tonne, hence we had to use very secure anchors.. We didn't have the luxury of a "nice flat ceiling".

In the water, they are approximately 50-70kgs negative..

Hope this helps...

Cheers

[OceanOpportunity]

thanks for the info...just curious-how are you able to swim such a large container to wherever it is staged? Why not use flexible haba-bags?

I do like the idea of loading them up for shipment, since they are pallet/forklift friendly!

regards
Mike

[jdz]

We were fortunate that the min width of the nightmare crescent was one metre so as we were just able to fit these IBCs through. All we did was get enough air into the habitat to make them neutral and with two divers, it became easy to push them around As you can see from the profile of the cave, once we got them through the crescent, then it is a straight drop down (to 102m) so with careful air adding we could maneuver them into position without too much difficulty..

In the 2010 expedition, we tried a bag habitat, but we had a lot of difficulty rigging it, mainly because we tried to achieve a mobile habitat which needed to travel diagonally as well as upwards.. It really didn't work with any degree of safety.. So we aborted this plan.. Also the seams of the bag started to leak, so we scrubbed the bag habitat and opted for the rigid version..

See this report.. 2010 Expedition - Wet Mules

Cheers