Cave dive exploration information of Riviera Maya Quintana Roo Mexico

The Ejido Jacinto Pat Expedition, have laid and surveyed over 26 kilometres of line since January, and in the process connected more than 56 km (187,772 feet) of underwater passage, making. El explorador no admite los marcos flotantes o no está configurado actualmente para mostrarlos.

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EJIDO JACINTO PAT EXPLORATION

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Expedition Portrait

BY: MICHAEL MENDUNO * as published in tec.asia I.I *

Forty three year old Paul Heinerth, tightens his grip on the line, leans back on his harness, and eases himself down the twisted chimney like cenote to the darkness below.

“It’s easier that way,” explains Heinerth, after a fifty minute forced march out from base camp.

Partner Jill Heinerth, steadies the rope and prepares to lower a six pack of strobes nine meters down to the red mud staging area inside the cave.

This is Heinerth’s third trip to “Conch Hope” which he named in memory of a failed Bahamas record attempt with fellow cave diver Brian Kakuk, and the two fossilized conch shells that he found in the underwater passage leading to the site.

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His first trip to the remote Yucatan cenote was through the water below.

Under orders, “not to come back unless he found the cenote,” Heinerth double staged the 1920 meter/6300 foot solo push from “Macco’s Marvels” (MI) to check out the air bell at the end of the line. No such luck.

He reeled on, leapfrogging the line that he and Kakuk had laid the day before.

A little further, Heinerth surfaced in a second bell, saw the bats, and knew there must be a glory hole in the jungle floor above. After twenty minutes of winding his way through the white fairy tale cavern, Heinerth saw the light.

Paamul Caribbean Paradise, Riviera Maya Q. Roo México

Stripping off his gear, Heinerth shimmied up the limestone air shaft, climbed the nearest tree and commenced hooting and hollering in the hopes someone would find him standard jungle operating procedure.

Forty five minutes later, a barefoot machete wielding Mayan Indian emerged from the sweltering bush with “Jungle Buddy” Quattlebaum, in tow. The two had slashed a shoulder width trail from base camp by following Heinerth’s hoots. “Conch Hope” was now on the map.

Led by Floridian expatriates, Buddy Quattlebaum and Steve Gerrard, the 45-odd cave divers that enlisted in the Ejido Jacinto Pat Expedition, have laid and surveyed over 26 kilometres of line since January, and in the process connected more than 56 km (187,772 feet) of underwater passage, making “Sistema Ejido Jacinto Pat,” the longest underwater system in the world.

Named after the Mayan-family cooperative, the “Ejido,” that owns the land, the cave now surpasses its nearby sister and former record holder, the 50 km long “Nohoch Nah Chich” (Giant Birdhouse), discovered by Cedam Dive Store owner Mike Madden in 1988.

Under Quattlebaum and Gerrard’s direction, Sistema Ejido Jacinto Pat has continued to “grow” almost daily this summer at the hands and feet of some of the most seasoned divers in the field, along with a crew of new expeditioners, and dozens of the sturdy chested Mayan Indians who make the jungle operations possible.

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