Post by Sharon Faulkner on Jul 13, 2006 8:04:08 GMT -5
Searching for Cave Fish and Oxygen in Thailand
By WILL GADD
July 13, 2006
A lot can be learned about a group of people by the games they play at parties after a few drinks. Financiers may indulge in liar’s poker, retirees perhaps some shuffleboard. Cavers, the intrepid explorers of the wet, cold and pitch-black, have been known to strip naked and try to worm through an adjustable boxlike contraption that simulates squeezing through a small section of cave passage. If a special “squeeze box” is not available, then chair legs, low-lying beds and even slightly opened windows can be put into service.
It is an informal test of skill for those in the sport of caving, formally known as spelunking, which combines a broad set of disciplines ranging from mud wrestling to demolition, with a bit of rock climbing and the occasional claustrophobic swimming thrown in.
I explored my first cave with my father at about age 8; he would point me like a ferret into the smaller holes and ask for reports on what was on the other side. Sometimes I would end up stuck in the hole like Pooh Bear, with my feet waving in the air. But becoming truly stuck is rare in caving. The general rule is that if you can slither into something, you can slither out. I have seen mud applied as a lubricant in some situations, but motivation is usually a powerful-enough tool to get out.
A reasonable question for someone who willingly puts himself in such predicaments is, “Why?”
For me, the simple answer is that caves are the last frontier of exploration on earth. There are no satellite photos or maps of caves, as they are hidden beneath the surface, and even radar is useless at finding passages. When cavers find a new cave or passage, they know they are probably the first people to crawl through that mud or walk down a passage glittering with wild stone formations.
A more complex answer lies in the sheer physicality of the sport. I have never done anything as brutally challenging as caving for 18 or 24 hours straight. Some caves feature passages in the shape of subway tunnels, but traversing most caves is more like crawling for miles over thousands of parked cars in a traffic jam. At night.
The toughest trip I have taken was to explore caves in the hill country of northern Thailand, in part to assist Richard L. Borowsky, a biology professor at New York University, who was studying the blind cave fish of Thailand. Many of those caves had high levels of carbon dioxide because of the wood and other debris that had washed into the caves during the rainy season. As the wood decays, it releases carbon dioxide, a gas that is heavier than air and that tends to pool invisibly in low areas of caves with stagnant air (although concentrations can change rapidly as a cave breathes cyclically each day).
A small increase in carbon dioxide results in a drastic reduction in the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. Symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning include severe headaches and irrational irritability, and the gas can be fatal.
Trying a new strategy, we used oxygen systems adapted from high-altitude mountaineering, thinking that the light but bulky devices would give us enough oxygen to push into unexplored territory. But crawling with the oxygen bottles was difficult, and the hoses tended to become caught on the uneven terrain. I seriously doubted that if the carbon dioxide levels rose unexpectedly we would be able to retreat fast enough to reach the entrance before we ran out of oxygen.
Using meters for oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, we soon found a large pool of carbon dioxide at the end of a tough cave section. We descended into the carbon dioxide pool with trepidation, leaving one person to stand as a lifeguard above the invisible gas layer.
I wanted to see what the effects of carbon dioxide were so I could learn to recognize them, so I took off my emergency-room-style nose cannula. I immediately felt hot, as if the temperature had abruptly spiked 20 degrees. This bothered me, as did the fact that we were moving so slowly. And, come to think of it, I did not like the color of my shoes much, either. The warning bells went off in my head as I checked the carbon dioxide meter and took stock of my symptoms: Hot? Yes. Irritable? Indeed. Fuzzy thinking? No, I’m fine. Where did I put that carbon dioxide meter again?
Our lifeguard observed that our coordination clearly deteriorated, and that we slowed visibly.
Borowsky took measurements of the amazing blind fish swimming in a stream while the rest of us alternated between breathing oxygen off the bottles and, out of curiosity, experiencing the affects of the carbon dioxide. After Borowsky had his data, we retreated, somewhat humbled but also with the sense that our systems did work well to mitigate the carbon dioxide.
Our next cave had slightly lower carbon dioxide levels initially, but the levels rose deeper in the cave, which had stopped all previous exploration efforts. After the open entrance galleries, the cave constricted until we were crawling along in a slow-moving stream, then lying on our backs in about 12 inches of water with our noses pressed against the ceiling. Moving quickly would start waves, which threatened to drown us. Occasionally, we would take pulls on the oxygen bottles to help clear our minds and stay calm, but the situation was dangerous.
We managed to explore about a half-mile of new cave, thanks to our oxygen systems, and documented the existence of a new type of cave fish. Then we retreated.
Most caves around the world have excellent air quality, and I think I will stick with those. They are challenging enough. And if you are ever at a party where people start trying to squeeze through the dish rack, you will know what is going on. It’s not an easy sport to practice.
www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/sports/othersports/13outdoors.html?_r=1
By WILL GADD
July 13, 2006
A lot can be learned about a group of people by the games they play at parties after a few drinks. Financiers may indulge in liar’s poker, retirees perhaps some shuffleboard. Cavers, the intrepid explorers of the wet, cold and pitch-black, have been known to strip naked and try to worm through an adjustable boxlike contraption that simulates squeezing through a small section of cave passage. If a special “squeeze box” is not available, then chair legs, low-lying beds and even slightly opened windows can be put into service.
It is an informal test of skill for those in the sport of caving, formally known as spelunking, which combines a broad set of disciplines ranging from mud wrestling to demolition, with a bit of rock climbing and the occasional claustrophobic swimming thrown in.
I explored my first cave with my father at about age 8; he would point me like a ferret into the smaller holes and ask for reports on what was on the other side. Sometimes I would end up stuck in the hole like Pooh Bear, with my feet waving in the air. But becoming truly stuck is rare in caving. The general rule is that if you can slither into something, you can slither out. I have seen mud applied as a lubricant in some situations, but motivation is usually a powerful-enough tool to get out.
A reasonable question for someone who willingly puts himself in such predicaments is, “Why?”
For me, the simple answer is that caves are the last frontier of exploration on earth. There are no satellite photos or maps of caves, as they are hidden beneath the surface, and even radar is useless at finding passages. When cavers find a new cave or passage, they know they are probably the first people to crawl through that mud or walk down a passage glittering with wild stone formations.
A more complex answer lies in the sheer physicality of the sport. I have never done anything as brutally challenging as caving for 18 or 24 hours straight. Some caves feature passages in the shape of subway tunnels, but traversing most caves is more like crawling for miles over thousands of parked cars in a traffic jam. At night.
The toughest trip I have taken was to explore caves in the hill country of northern Thailand, in part to assist Richard L. Borowsky, a biology professor at New York University, who was studying the blind cave fish of Thailand. Many of those caves had high levels of carbon dioxide because of the wood and other debris that had washed into the caves during the rainy season. As the wood decays, it releases carbon dioxide, a gas that is heavier than air and that tends to pool invisibly in low areas of caves with stagnant air (although concentrations can change rapidly as a cave breathes cyclically each day).
A small increase in carbon dioxide results in a drastic reduction in the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. Symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning include severe headaches and irrational irritability, and the gas can be fatal.
Trying a new strategy, we used oxygen systems adapted from high-altitude mountaineering, thinking that the light but bulky devices would give us enough oxygen to push into unexplored territory. But crawling with the oxygen bottles was difficult, and the hoses tended to become caught on the uneven terrain. I seriously doubted that if the carbon dioxide levels rose unexpectedly we would be able to retreat fast enough to reach the entrance before we ran out of oxygen.
Using meters for oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, we soon found a large pool of carbon dioxide at the end of a tough cave section. We descended into the carbon dioxide pool with trepidation, leaving one person to stand as a lifeguard above the invisible gas layer.
I wanted to see what the effects of carbon dioxide were so I could learn to recognize them, so I took off my emergency-room-style nose cannula. I immediately felt hot, as if the temperature had abruptly spiked 20 degrees. This bothered me, as did the fact that we were moving so slowly. And, come to think of it, I did not like the color of my shoes much, either. The warning bells went off in my head as I checked the carbon dioxide meter and took stock of my symptoms: Hot? Yes. Irritable? Indeed. Fuzzy thinking? No, I’m fine. Where did I put that carbon dioxide meter again?
Our lifeguard observed that our coordination clearly deteriorated, and that we slowed visibly.
Borowsky took measurements of the amazing blind fish swimming in a stream while the rest of us alternated between breathing oxygen off the bottles and, out of curiosity, experiencing the affects of the carbon dioxide. After Borowsky had his data, we retreated, somewhat humbled but also with the sense that our systems did work well to mitigate the carbon dioxide.
Our next cave had slightly lower carbon dioxide levels initially, but the levels rose deeper in the cave, which had stopped all previous exploration efforts. After the open entrance galleries, the cave constricted until we were crawling along in a slow-moving stream, then lying on our backs in about 12 inches of water with our noses pressed against the ceiling. Moving quickly would start waves, which threatened to drown us. Occasionally, we would take pulls on the oxygen bottles to help clear our minds and stay calm, but the situation was dangerous.
We managed to explore about a half-mile of new cave, thanks to our oxygen systems, and documented the existence of a new type of cave fish. Then we retreated.
Most caves around the world have excellent air quality, and I think I will stick with those. They are challenging enough. And if you are ever at a party where people start trying to squeeze through the dish rack, you will know what is going on. It’s not an easy sport to practice.
www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/sports/othersports/13outdoors.html?_r=1