Oh
[Music]
my name is Nancy Ellen Bach I am a
second-generation caterer I’ve been
caving my entire life I feel more at
home underground than I do anywhere else
this is where I belong and I am a
sustaining contributor of the
southeastern cave Conservancy
I think cavers go into caves for a
variety of different reasons some people
enjoy you know the biology the hydrology
and stuff and some people might see the
adventure of caving as being the
physical parts of it the repelling the
climbing out of the pits for me
personally the adventurous side of
caving is really the mystery of the
unknown it’s the exploration part of it
what are we going to find that passage
is breathing a lot of air so hopefully
we will find a lot more cave beyond
people walk above-ground and they don’t
know what’s under here I hope with a
little secret that no one else might
know about what’s around that corner
it’s just an amazing feeling when you
can be the first person to see an area
or a cave no one else has ever seen
before that’s the most amazing secret
you could ever have one of the things
that people most often overlook about
caves is the fact that water has
influenced the case throughout history
my name is Brad Barker I’m a teacher of
high school science I teach biology and
environmental science at Georgia School
for the Deaf and I’m also a caver
and a sustaining member of the
southeastern cave Conservancy understand
that 350 million years ago and older
durin will is known as the Mississippi
Ananda Pennsylvania and periods of
geologic time the areas of Florida
Georgia parts of Alabama up into
Tennessee all of those were covered in a
shallow sea and what that means is this
area was completely underwater and
covered in life
the seafloor became what we now have is
rock on the surface this rock is called
limestone and limestone has one
interesting property and that is when
anything acidic hits it it starts to
dissolve it and just as it rain
basically starts to just erode it away a
little bit at a time I mean we’re
talking millions of years to create
these huge caverns underground
[Music]
the tennessee alabama and georgia area
where the three states come together is
called tag we know it by cavers we go
tagged caving and here in the Cumberland
Plateau is geologically perfect for
caves so we are lucky enough in the tag
area to have the highest concentration
of caves in the United States so this is
the mecca for caving and cavers between
Tennessee Alabama and Georgia there are
17,000 known caves and every year cavers
and explorers are continually finding
new caves they’re finding UK passages
that have never been known to exist
before and all of this is because of the
water that falls but not only is the
water creating these caves by flowing
through them in a kind of way creating
the cave but destroying the rock at the
same time minerals and calcium inside of
the water whenever it sits there and the
drips off slowly will start to form
formations such as stalactites on the
ceiling you’ve got stalagmites on the
floor you’ve got columns and so all of a
sudden the water that made the cave has
now become the water that is trading
these beautiful formations that we like
to look at one thing that’s really
important understand is and the karst
area the United States whenever it rains
the water immediately enters the
groundwater and what that means is when
there’s pollution the pollution spreads
into the groundwater
and people’s drinking supplies much
faster and it’s gonna have a detrimental
effect on the health of the humans in
the area but also it impacts the entire
ecosystem inside the caves but also
outside of the cave as well this secret
part that is so important for us is that
we have to protect the watersheds we’ve
got to protect the areas around the
caves because if we let pollution get
into these ecosystems then we basically
destroy an entire ecosystem inside of
caves and that’s something that we can’t
go back and fix Caves are nutrient
limited environments generally bats
bring in guano cave crickets move back
and forth to the surface things fall in
entrances or are blown and entering
but a major source of nutrients in caves
is water and so the quality of water
that enters a cave is critical to cave
life in that cave when we see
disturbances in the water that flows
into a cave cave communities suffer and
can collapse my name is Kirk Ziegler I
am a biology professor at the University
of the South in Suwannee Tennessee I’m a
member of the SEC I and I’ve done
research on K biodiversity and a handful
of seci caves caves hosted diverse
community of organisms and it’s largely
secret life things that spend their
entire lifecycle underground and those
are called cave obligate creatures there
are terrestrial ones like spiders
millipedes aquatic ones cave crayfish
cave salamanders cave fish the most
interesting thing about them is they all
came from surface ancestors so it’s an
amazing example of convergent evolution
in this challenging no light usually low
food environment in the southeast we
have about ten species of bats that use
caves to varying degrees and that’s are
a critical part of cave ecosystems
because they bring lots of nutrients
into these nutrient poor environments in
the last few years
white-nose syndrome has spread into the
southeast and it’s a tremendous concern
because we’ve begun to see declines in
bat populations across the southeast the
impacts where cave ecosystems are many
fewer nutrients flowing into caves when
fewer bats are moving in and out and of
course bats have tremendous and extreme
economic importance in surface
ecosystems as well so if our bat
populations decrease significantly it’s
going to have real human impact as well
[Music]
cave entrances provide important
habitats to a variety of plant species
as well because of high moisture and
cool
air that comes out of caves during the
summertime those environments stay
cooler than the surrounding forests it’s
also a lot of exposed limestone which
some species specialize on so there’s a
unique community of plants and animals
that you can find right around cave
entrances my name is Aimee hink and I’m
Akay photographer and a missus a member
of the southeastern cave Conservancy and
am also in Huntsville cave rescue I do
my cave photography just to share this
secret beauty of the underworld with
everybody else it’s important for
conservation because you can’t conserve
what you don’t understand and you can’t
understand what you don’t see and
explore and not everybody can go in
explore caves so what they see in my
photography is hopefully what will
prompt them to care about these amazing
environments and all of their beauty my
favorite kind of lighting for formations
and things of that nature is definitely
backlighting because I really like that
high level contrast in my images I love
it because you get the concepts that
you’re in a cave for me when I have that
bit of dark in the image there’s that
bit of wonder you know what’s what’s
there what’s around the corner and and
really that’s kind of the beauty of
caves is exploration there’s really
nothing to compare one to the other
some are wet and they have huge raging
rivers so there are a large for whole
some you have to crawl in mud for
thousands of feet to see anything I have
a special place in my heart for getting
photographs of the huge pits that we
have here and tagged the vertical shafts
the challenge with that getting
something lit up so beautifully when you
have this huge amount space that just
the brain can’t comprehend with my
photography I’m able to capture these
amazing environments and passed the
secret Beauty on to all future
generations which is something really no
other medium can do you can read
something in a paper or listen to a
story but when you actually put a
picture behind something it makes it
something worth conserving and something
worth protecting and to me that’s really
important
[Music]
well caving started more or less when I
was about 2 years old my dad took me in
a backpack and slid me all the way down
through the little tunnel chute and I
got in there and I was completely amazed
it was dark and I mean I was a
two-year-old I was certainly scared the
first time from then on I’ve just
enjoyed it ever since my name is Zane
Holcomb certified in wilderness
first-aid and hoping to become
Wilderness First Responder certified
well my father the very first thing he
taught me is walk in and Leave No Trace
you pack out exactly what you carry in
and he taught me all the different ways
to go in and become a respectable person
of how to maintain a cave and leave it
in its original beauty and I hope to
pass this on to my children and their
children and on down the line it’s so
important for us to strike that balance
between wanting to enjoy going into the
caves and also wanting to pass this
sense of adventure or these secrets on
to the next generations but it has to be
done responsibly so it’s so important
that we teach the conservation side of
caving taking good care of it it’s a
non-renewable resource that can be
damaged so easily it’s not like if you
cut down a tree a tree will grow back if
you break a formation or step in a
stream and destroy that habitat then
it’s a non-renewable so it’s so
important to educate people so that we
can have proper conservation of these
amazing resources the reason why caves
are such a secret is probably because
cavers tend to be very closed lipped
about where the caves are and it’s not
because we don’t want to share these
beautiful places with everybody it’s
that we like to make sure that people
have the proper training and the proper
education of how to cave softly so that
these resources aren’t damaged and we
can you know pass these on to our
futures orations to
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
my name is Nancy Ellen Bach I am a
second-generation caterer I’ve been
caving my entire life I feel more at
home underground than I do anywhere else
this is where I belong and I am a
sustaining contributor of the
southeastern cave Conservancy
I think cavers go into caves for a
variety of different reasons some people
enjoy you know the biology the hydrology
and stuff and some people might see the
adventure of caving as being the
physical parts of it the repelling the
climbing out of the pits for me
personally the adventurous side of
caving is really the mystery of the
unknown it’s the exploration part of it
what are we going to find that passage
is breathing a lot of air so hopefully
we will find a lot more cave beyond
people walk above-ground and they don’t
know what’s under here I hope with a
little secret that no one else might
know about what’s around that corner
it’s just an amazing feeling when you
can be the first person to see an area
or a cave no one else has ever seen
before that’s the most amazing secret
you could ever have one of the things
that people most often overlook about
caves is the fact that water has
influenced the case throughout history
my name is Brad Barker I’m a teacher of
high school science I teach biology and
environmental science at Georgia School
for the Deaf and I’m also a caver
and a sustaining member of the
southeastern cave Conservancy understand
that 350 million years ago and older
durin will is known as the Mississippi
Ananda Pennsylvania and periods of
geologic time the areas of Florida
Georgia parts of Alabama up into
Tennessee all of those were covered in a
shallow sea and what that means is this
area was completely underwater and
covered in life
the seafloor became what we now have is
rock on the surface this rock is called
limestone and limestone has one
interesting property and that is when
anything acidic hits it it starts to
dissolve it and just as it rain
basically starts to just erode it away a
little bit at a time I mean we’re
talking millions of years to create
these huge caverns underground
[Music]
the tennessee alabama and georgia area
where the three states come together is
called tag we know it by cavers we go
tagged caving and here in the Cumberland
Plateau is geologically perfect for
caves so we are lucky enough in the tag
area to have the highest concentration
of caves in the United States so this is
the mecca for caving and cavers between
Tennessee Alabama and Georgia there are
17,000 known caves and every year cavers
and explorers are continually finding
new caves they’re finding UK passages
that have never been known to exist
before and all of this is because of the
water that falls but not only is the
water creating these caves by flowing
through them in a kind of way creating
the cave but destroying the rock at the
same time minerals and calcium inside of
the water whenever it sits there and the
drips off slowly will start to form
formations such as stalactites on the
ceiling you’ve got stalagmites on the
floor you’ve got columns and so all of a
sudden the water that made the cave has
now become the water that is trading
these beautiful formations that we like
to look at one thing that’s really
important understand is and the karst
area the United States whenever it rains
the water immediately enters the
groundwater and what that means is when
there’s pollution the pollution spreads
into the groundwater
and people’s drinking supplies much
faster and it’s gonna have a detrimental
effect on the health of the humans in
the area but also it impacts the entire
ecosystem inside the caves but also
outside of the cave as well this secret
part that is so important for us is that
we have to protect the watersheds we’ve
got to protect the areas around the
caves because if we let pollution get
into these ecosystems then we basically
destroy an entire ecosystem inside of
caves and that’s something that we can’t
go back and fix Caves are nutrient
limited environments generally bats
bring in guano cave crickets move back
and forth to the surface things fall in
entrances or are blown and entering
but a major source of nutrients in caves
is water and so the quality of water
that enters a cave is critical to cave
life in that cave when we see
disturbances in the water that flows
into a cave cave communities suffer and
can collapse my name is Kirk Ziegler I
am a biology professor at the University
of the South in Suwannee Tennessee I’m a
member of the SEC I and I’ve done
research on K biodiversity and a handful
of seci caves caves hosted diverse
community of organisms and it’s largely
secret life things that spend their
entire lifecycle underground and those
are called cave obligate creatures there
are terrestrial ones like spiders
millipedes aquatic ones cave crayfish
cave salamanders cave fish the most
interesting thing about them is they all
came from surface ancestors so it’s an
amazing example of convergent evolution
in this challenging no light usually low
food environment in the southeast we
have about ten species of bats that use
caves to varying degrees and that’s are
a critical part of cave ecosystems
because they bring lots of nutrients
into these nutrient poor environments in
the last few years
white-nose syndrome has spread into the
southeast and it’s a tremendous concern
because we’ve begun to see declines in
bat populations across the southeast the
impacts where cave ecosystems are many
fewer nutrients flowing into caves when
fewer bats are moving in and out and of
course bats have tremendous and extreme
economic importance in surface
ecosystems as well so if our bat
populations decrease significantly it’s
going to have real human impact as well
[Music]
cave entrances provide important
habitats to a variety of plant species
as well because of high moisture and
cool
air that comes out of caves during the
summertime those environments stay
cooler than the surrounding forests it’s
also a lot of exposed limestone which
some species specialize on so there’s a
unique community of plants and animals
that you can find right around cave
entrances my name is Aimee hink and I’m
Akay photographer and a missus a member
of the southeastern cave Conservancy and
am also in Huntsville cave rescue I do
my cave photography just to share this
secret beauty of the underworld with
everybody else it’s important for
conservation because you can’t conserve
what you don’t understand and you can’t
understand what you don’t see and
explore and not everybody can go in
explore caves so what they see in my
photography is hopefully what will
prompt them to care about these amazing
environments and all of their beauty my
favorite kind of lighting for formations
and things of that nature is definitely
backlighting because I really like that
high level contrast in my images I love
it because you get the concepts that
you’re in a cave for me when I have that
bit of dark in the image there’s that
bit of wonder you know what’s what’s
there what’s around the corner and and
really that’s kind of the beauty of
caves is exploration there’s really
nothing to compare one to the other
some are wet and they have huge raging
rivers so there are a large for whole
some you have to crawl in mud for
thousands of feet to see anything I have
a special place in my heart for getting
photographs of the huge pits that we
have here and tagged the vertical shafts
the challenge with that getting
something lit up so beautifully when you
have this huge amount space that just
the brain can’t comprehend with my
photography I’m able to capture these
amazing environments and passed the
secret Beauty on to all future
generations which is something really no
other medium can do you can read
something in a paper or listen to a
story but when you actually put a
picture behind something it makes it
something worth conserving and something
worth protecting and to me that’s really
important
[Music]
well caving started more or less when I
was about 2 years old my dad took me in
a backpack and slid me all the way down
through the little tunnel chute and I
got in there and I was completely amazed
it was dark and I mean I was a
two-year-old I was certainly scared the
first time from then on I’ve just
enjoyed it ever since my name is Zane
Holcomb certified in wilderness
first-aid and hoping to become
Wilderness First Responder certified
well my father the very first thing he
taught me is walk in and Leave No Trace
you pack out exactly what you carry in
and he taught me all the different ways
to go in and become a respectable person
of how to maintain a cave and leave it
in its original beauty and I hope to
pass this on to my children and their
children and on down the line it’s so
important for us to strike that balance
between wanting to enjoy going into the
caves and also wanting to pass this
sense of adventure or these secrets on
to the next generations but it has to be
done responsibly so it’s so important
that we teach the conservation side of
caving taking good care of it it’s a
non-renewable resource that can be
damaged so easily it’s not like if you
cut down a tree a tree will grow back if
you break a formation or step in a
stream and destroy that habitat then
it’s a non-renewable so it’s so
important to educate people so that we
can have proper conservation of these
amazing resources the reason why caves
are such a secret is probably because
cavers tend to be very closed lipped
about where the caves are and it’s not
because we don’t want to share these
beautiful places with everybody it’s
that we like to make sure that people
have the proper training and the proper
education of how to cave softly so that
these resources aren’t damaged and we
can you know pass these on to our
futures orations to
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you
[Music]
[Music]
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