Diving in the Opal mines of Dubnik
Posted By David Cani & Petr Vaverka on 30 August 2006
Visitors and amateur opal hunters are allowed to visit the dry area of the mine during the summer season to look for opals after paying a local fee.
There are two circles for diving in Dubnik which are about 600m (2000feet)long.
But because of the high risk and overhead, cave diving with the right configuration, special training and experience (certification) are needed!!!
HEAD SIDE FIRST
For Sunday we had decided to go into a non marked and lineless corridor at -40m of depth (133feet) which is going to the mezzanine all the way into “Fedo”, which was discovered two years ago by a couple of divers Hasa & Skovajsa.
After the descent to the main crossroad – Marek was the first who penetrated – head side first – into a small slot and the rest of us were following him down one by one.
The last one to descend into the vertical tunnel was Petr. He was going down just by instinct with absolute zero visibility…I did not envy him.
To go down into a chimney with a mix of rolling bubbles, dirt, ooze and mud is a courageous achievement.
Going down very slowly, deeper and deeper from the connecting corridor on our own reel was nice because this area has been penetrated by very few divers (you can count them on one hand).
The ceiling of this tunnel is still almost untouched, more then two feet long decoration of “limonitas” curtain.
Marek has been leading us through a corridor which was known only by him. I followed him about three meters (10feet) behind with great admiration of his brilliant movement in a space like this, with a lot of ooze it can get very cloudy easily…
He did not stir up any sediment when moving, so I had a great chance to take a lot of pictures in great visibility.
I could not believe my eyes when we came to a spot with rails which lead us back to the shaft “Fedo” where it connected to a bizarre underground railway station.
There we were floating like in the air and unbelievably looking at all the rest of the human activities which made this county a hundred years ago, known and famous all over the world.
The space in the shaft “Fedo” is very unstable because of a collapse above it.
It is impossible to dive to the bottom with a open circuit system to discover corridors at levels -50m (166feet) deep.
This might possible for divers with rebreathers which are not making bubbles…
- Bookmark with :
- what are these?
