Understanding the underground route of cave systems isn’t only important to divers – it also helps to correlate surface features like sloughs and sinkholes to the geography beneath our feet. Cave maps can help identify sources of pollution, areas that need protection, and provide hints for the direction of future exploration.
Cave maps of Manatee Springs and Madison Blue Springs have both been updated by Matt Hansen with some help from the KUR team. After discovering the Graveyard passage in 2022, Matt has been working tirelessly to survey the lesser-known parts of Madison and plot those findings on a new map for divers and the public.
Printed versions of these maps are available for $80 each at Cave Country Dive Shop, Extreme Exposure, Dive Outpost or directly from Matt. They’re color, laminated, and 24×36.
Creating these maps was a massive undertaking which resulted in apps being written and programs being created in addition to the obvious survey work that was completed. In an effort to recognize the scale of this project we wanted to share basic statistics.
Madison:
- Over 9 miles of surveyed passage
- Max depth: 145 feet
- Survey shots: 1947
- Max penetration: 8166 feet
- Survey from 1995 to 2024, but 35% by distance in the last 3 years. 13 years of data total (there’s nothing between 1996 and 2009 inclusive, nothing in 2016, 2017, 2021)
- Thousands of hours of survey work across a huge team
- Matt has been working on it since 2022
Manatee:
- 12 years of survey data: 1979, 2001, 2002, and most of the years from 2008-2018
- 7.67 miles of surveyed passage
- Max depth: 105 feet
Matt feels KUR should provide revisions for the open access caves in Florida to cave divers as a service. As a “thank you” for the community’s support for what we do, small scale versions of the maps are made available at no charge.
The Madison map shows nearly twice the passage as the previous map, all 6 entrances to the system (!!), a bonus map of Pot Spring, and even a few stubs of unsurveyed passage for those looking to join the effort.
The new map of Manatee, is the product of years of exploration across many different teams. In terms of penetration distance from the nearest entrance, Manatee is one of the longest caves in Florida – the end of the line is almost 3 miles from air.Â
