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United States » Harvey's Cave

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Date	Submitter	Visbility	Remarks
10/13/2021	Guy Bryant	10-60ft	Went back to Asphasia Pit in tannic water, vis 10 ft. Started dropping the pit, but at 120 ft depth, still tannic and 10 ft vis. So turned and went down the Turtle Passage which was also tannic and 10 ft vis. Jumped over to the Cyrstal Room and at the restriction to the room the vis went to 20 ft hazy blue. Once in the Crystal Room there was a layer of 60 ft vis in the top half. Decided to check out the Pepperment Passage and vis dropped back down to 20 ft hazy blue. Decided to turn at this point and head out.
6/20/2014	Gregg Stanton	10 ft in sinkhole, 6 -10 in the cave, Crystal room at 20	The passage to the Aphasia pit is tannin and mostly 6 ft vis to the bottom of the shaft at 240 ft. The Turtle Passage is stratified with Tannins on the floor and up to 15 ft vis mid room and up. A white hazy layer between. Crystal Room has 20 visibility.
5/23/2013	Andy Pitkin	20-40'	Basin green but around 30' visibility. Tannic water in shallow and deep sections with visibility around 20'. Layers of clearer water near the tops of some rooms on the shallow side with 40' visibility. Strong syphon at the bottom of the Aphasia Pit.
8/15/2012	Gregg Stanton	10 ft.	Basin 2 ft tannin, warmer w/duck weed. Shaft below 30 ft 10 ft vis. cooler & cloudy. Warm halocline at 160 ft. In Aphasia pit.
6/9/2012	AJ Gonzales	30ft	Vis was 20ish to the Pit (visibility at the pit was greatly reduced), and around 30-40ft in the Turtle Tunnel.
6/8/2012	Mer	30-60 variable	30' vis towards pit, but clear water 60'vis eventually if go right at 4-way T. Clears up around the sharp left hand turn ad gets bad again (10' vis) when cave trends down again.
11/16/2011	Keith Mille	40-50 ft	Joe and I went to the Crystal Room. Visibility is still as good as it gets for Harvey's. Wall to wall visibility, blue in the tops of the domes in the ceiling. High density of cave amphipods/isopods, and numerous large cave crayfish.
5/23/2011	Brian	15-50 or so	went right at the T instead of left to the pit. some tannic spots in the deeper bits around those T's but mostly clear. doubled back to turtle passage. wall to wall in most of it. crystal room fairly clear, clear lake is clear
5/7/2011	OFG	15-50	Gerri and I dove Harvey's on Saturday. It is about as good as Harvey's gets. 15-20 in the turtle passage, 50 or so in the crystal room. But that is not why I posted this. I a VERY unhappy with the condition of the cave. All along the line there are pieces of the overhead that have been broken off and are lying on the ground. There are hand prints, knee prints and god knows what else in the mud of the floor. This has happened within the last year or so. If you get off the line 15 feet, it looks like it did 6 or 7 years ago, pristine. Harvey's is not a place for beginning cave divers. The visibility is usually not very good, the overhead is all soft dark formations,some very delicate, and the line is close to the wall in places. The access path down to the water is getting beaten up, and erosion is starting to eat away at it. I am not sure what is going on in there, but please, if you are just starting out remember that Harvey's is not a good beginning level dive.
4/11/2011	Rob Neto	20-30	The basin was the best I've seen it. I could actually see the bottom down to the rim. Water level is down about 3' from the last time I was here. Great visibility in the basin. No problems seeing the trees or lines. Headed back to the Aphasia Pit. Still had decent visibility but there was definitely some tannic intrusion giving the water a reddish hue. After dropping down to the 200' range in the Pit, we headed back and swam the Turtle Passage for about 15 minutes before turning to head out. I'd love to see Harvey's with better visibility, but I'll take what we got!
1/29/2011	Mat	10-15'	The majority of the cave was tannic, but there were pockets of clear(crystal) water on some of the shallower ceilings that you could enjoy a hundred feet at a time.
12/17/2010	Wakulla Diving Center	10-15ft	Tannons everywhere, Crystal room was black.
11/27/2010	James Garrett	5-10ft	Tannic everywhere we went.
11/7/2010	Mathew Bull	15-20'	Slightly tannic, didn't find any pockets of spring water in the Turtle Passage
4/10/2010	Mathew Bull	10-100'	For the most part visibility was typical Harvey's... Milky green water ontop and tannic at the very bottom of the Turtle Passage, tannic throughout(for the most part) to the top of the Aphasia Pit. Found one room/passage to be extremely clear, crystal even...
3/6/2010	Mathew Bull	20-80'	Basin was clear and green, waterlevels really low, but thats never an indication of the cave below. Turtle passage was clear, slightly green and milky, with pockets of crystal clear, blue, water on the ceiling. The Crystal Room had the same greenish water as the majority of the cave passage. WCDC has put goldline up the turtle passage to around 900'p, just shy of the second "T", counting the Crystal Room passage as the first "T".
12/20/2009	Andrew Ainslie	5-15 ft	Went down to the deep section (Aphasia pit I think?). The vis was pertty poor, and the line was covered in a really thick layer of organic green goo. Sort of like the Inuslation Room at Ginnie but grosser. After 600 ft my adrenalin level hit thirds, and I backed out. Fun dive!
11/28/2009	Andrew Ainslie	10-20 ft	Dove with Tony Flaris. The vis was pretty poor, but of course that's usual here. We got a bit lost but finally found the deep section. Dropped to 240 ft but didn't go anywhere as I had alarms screaming at me. Tony and I both intend going back soon and revisiting the deep section. The "gold line" is a bit confusing. It doesn't run very far, and it's a JUMP (!!) off the line going in. A little weird.
11/14/2009	Jeff Schreiber	10-20	tannic throughout. 10 in the passage. 15-20 in the crystal room. 15-20 in the passage on exit.
9/19/2009	Mathew Bull	10-20'	Water has flipped, tannic water on the bottom of the passages and blue spring(milky) up top. Spring water was hazy with at most, 20' visibility. The tannic water was clear in areas, smokey in others, but deep red.
8/9/2009	Mathew Bull	5' and very tannic	After passing through the first 15' of muck in the basin, the water seems to clear up, but by the time you level off to the cave, tannic intrusion is very apparent. Once in the cave there's about 5' of smokey visibility through very dark tannic water(like rootbeer). Ben G placed the grim reaper sign at the "T", continued for a few dozen feet, and we decided to exit.
7/18/2009	NicK Leone	40-50" a bit tanic.	That was fun. Warm water at 15 ft 40-50" of vis, it was dark.
6/7/2009	Mathew Bull	20-40'	The cave water was less red than the last few times I was there, and cleaner. There were less pockets of blue spring water as well though, only about the bottom 1/3rd of the crystal room was blue - the rest had a slight tannic intrusion.
5/22/2009	Mathew Bull	10-40'	Basically the same as the last dive except the top of the Crystal Room was tannic with the spring water starting just above the top of the breakdown on the bottom of the room.
4/25/2009	Mathew Bull	10-40'	10-20' visibility in the Turtle Passage with a pocket of blue water on the bottom along the way. Crystal Room had a good 30-40' of visibility and was blue as soon as you dropped into it(tannic in the passage leading up to the room itself). Great dive.
3/9/2009	Brian Richardson	30-ish??	dove the pit last weekend and to the crystal room on saturday. about 30' of vis in both. apparently the vis is supposed to clear up in the crystal room? well it didn't. :) still an awesome dive
2/1/2009	aw	Clear	I stopped by and looked at Harvey's Sink basin yesterday. Man, the water was as clear I I've ever seen it. Haven't dove it in months, but now would be a good time. Water level was down about 3 ft. Must have been a low tide time or something.
11/7/2008	OFG-1	5	dove Harvey's last night. I can best describe conditions as such: 1) I knew I was underwater because my drysuit leaked like a sieve. 2) I knew I was in a cave because I swam into the wall and ceiling. Other than that, IF we had 10' of vis anywhere, I would have liked it more. Even the crystal room was trash.
3/17/2008	OFG-1	25-40	This is probably the most unpredictable system I dive. The water in the basin had 40' of vis, 25-35 in the turtle passage, but the crystal room was cloudy. Peppermint passage looked clear? Go figure. There are layers of clear blue water in the top of the tunnel. There are cloudy water layers everywhere. The water level was 4' lower than last week. Overall, not too bad for Harvey's. HOWEVER, some moron has been dicking with the line. It is in the dirt in places, tie offs are moved, and the snap jump to the crystal room is now kinda a tee, and not done well. The big line trap is now worse. Will you guys will please leave existing lines alone unless you get tangled or actually have some idea of how to improve something.
11/17/2007	akcaver	10'-30'	Harveys has a semi-clear basin right now, maybe 30', but in the cave its 10' or less until the pit, where it clears to about 15' at the top and 30' at the bottom. Cool (mid-60's) water temp in the basin makes for a cold deco, especially in a wetsuit doing trimix!
8/25/2007	Allen Wooten	30 ft	Despite recent rains in Tally, Harvey's is still very divable. The first 10 feet are maybe 3 ft vis. But below 10 ft it clears up to 30 ft maybe. We went about 1,000 ft downstream. You'd get varying vis. Some sections would drop to 5 ft and others easily 30 ft.
8/16/2007	John	20'-25'	Gerry and I dove Harvey's last night. The basin is totally blown down to 25 feet. Finding the tie off log is done by the Ray Charles method. From the tie off to the dumbbell, it begins to improve. The turtle passage had 20-25' hazy vis. The Crystal room was no better, peppermint passage a bit better, not much. The tunnel to the pit was 10-20' hazy vis. We did not go into the pit or past the jump to the crystal room. Water temp 68. Level high, though we could have been there at high tide. Sulfide layer at about 25 feet, just enough to give you a good taste. The basin is bad, 3' or less vis. If you don't know where the tie off is, don't go. Someone has beat the crap out of the overhead in the turtle passage since we were last there about a month ago, little pieces of it scattered around. Two big hand prints in the mud. The line is not in good shape. For those that don't know, Harvey's is not a entry level cave dive.
3/27/2007	akcaver	10-50'	Basin was very low, but also very clear, with maybe 10' viz at times in the sink. As always, viz increases steadily the farther back you get. Crystal room was beautiful as always, with about 50' viz, except for the deeper part past 115', where the water was murkey with maybe 20' viz. Good dive right now, hit it before the rain does.
1/1/2007	Walter Pickel	20ish	Stopped by just to have a peak on my way home from Tallahassee. System looked very clear from the surface and I was able to see about 15' below the surface without polarized glasses. Water is an aquamarine color.
10/4/2006	Craig Gaffka	20-30	The system is looking clearer than I've seen it. the sink has very low vis until about 300' into the cave were blue water has migrated near the ceiling and tannin water on the floor, two layers of water. pretty consistently the cave appeared to have better vis the further upstream you went into the system.
9/9/2006	Craig Gaffka	5'-15'	Dove the system for the first time and really enjoyed the site, however the vis was rather poor and the flow stagnant. There were different layers of water with varying visibilities. Some of the water was very smokey while other parts where clearer. The cave had the most active population of some of the biggest crayfish I'd ever seen, I had also seen dead crayfish to. As far as navigating, upon entering at about 20' in the middle of the sink on some trees is were the line starts. There are two line, I took the yellow one down to the dumbbell and swam right into the cave. However, if you continue past the dumbbell you will reach the sinks bottom where the line is tied off to a log and goes no where the dumbbell is were you want to go in at.
6/10/2006	Eric Deister	40ish	Several of us went into there today, my first time there…. Oh and the dead deer is gone ( thinking that the locals had a cookout Friday night ) dropped down the main shaft went in and to the right towards the Pit, I was shooting video so I was behind the RB diver so it was nice and clear, hit the pit and dropped down to the bottom, pretty walls. Hit the bottom and Maestro showed me the line at the bottom going in at 265 feet, I didn’t go in but it looked real fun….next time with the right gear, no video camera and in sidemount……. Rest of the dive was pretty much standard cave diving…
5/25/2006	IowaCaveDiver	20'-40'	Despite the dead rotting dear carcass that is still waiting to greet you while gearing up, the dive was excellent. We had between 20-40 of viz and went to the "pit" and back (this is the drop off to the deep section... mainline goes from 70 to 100 and then drops straight down to 240', or so I'm told... we leveled off at 105', looked below and turned), then we went back and took the first "t" near the cavern which on entrance would go to the left, I believe called the turtle tunnel by some. We went a couple thousand feet back there and had an absolutely wonderful dive. Nick leveled off several feet off the bottom while I swam 20-30 above him near the ceiling getting a great perspective of the cave (my first time). We turned our dive some ways back near a restriction that looked like a tight pair of lips that went up-wards with a gravel breakdown on the floor. As for the lines at the entrance, the two from the log go as follows... one (thin algae covered line) goes to a shallower entrance (side mount I'm told and tight and silty) and the second as mentioned above goes straight to the bottom (100' or so). If you continue down you'll find several lines that break off from the main/thicker yellow line heading to the bottom. We took the one tied off the orange dumb bell (yes, there is a dumb bell tied off ...probably for weighting of the line... and it took us straight into the cave. It is rather disorienting since it is so dark and there is not a lot to get a visual on. We were also diving at night which threw me off a bit as well. Great dive though, we plan to go back soon (Tuesday?) and I hear there are plans to lay new line in there. Great dive, I highly recommend it, if you don't mind lower viz and a bit of silty bottom. (easily disturbed).
4/15/2006	Allen Wooten	20 ft	Basin was clear. 20 ft vis throughout the cave to Aphasia Pit and also Turtle Tunnel. Water level was a few feet down. May be from the tidal influence at the time of dive.

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