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Deep below the dark waters of Cottage Pond, a
monster lurks. An apex predator in the harsh environment of the underwater
cave, this creature lives in a world of perpetual night. At a depth of 200
feet (60 meters) the creature glides effortlessly through the water,
searching for vibrations from its prey. Suddenly, the powerful light of a cave diver pierces the gloom. The diver's regulator rasps noisily as he free-falls through the blackness like an astronaut exploring inner space. The creature senses prey approaching. It flexes the numerous paddle-shaped limbs that allow it to dart swiftly through the water. As the diver's flashlight looms closer, the creature prepares itself for the attack. ]A sudden chill runs down the diver's spine as he reaches the thermocline at 140 feet. His light bounces eerily across the walls of the cave, creating shadows that his imagination prefers to ignore. Was that movement below him? The creature hovers in the darkness just beyond the light. It can attack and kill creatures many times its own size. When seized, the creature's powerful fang-like limbs inject a poisonous digestive fluid into the prey, which is then slowly eaten alive. The beam from the diver's torch slowly approaches. The attack is swift and final. The diver scoops the tiny creature into his sample jar and seals the lid. Examining the creature in the harsh beam of the flashlight, the diver emits an excited whoop of delight before heading back to the surface.  A
brand new species of the primitive crustacean class Remipedia has just
been discovered in North Caicos -- Kaloketos
pilosus: the Beautiful Sea Monster. Cottage Pond is a submerged sinkhole located 4 kilometers inland from the coastline of North Caicos. The pond forms a circular pool 165 feet (50 meters) in diameter and connects with the ocean through a series of tiny fissures. Tidal fluctuations can be clearly seen as the murky, brackish water rises and falls with the ocean tides.  Cottage
Pond is shrouded with an air of mystery. Legends of the infamous
"Mermaid" prevail,
even though she has not been spotted during numerous dives we have made
inside the cave system. In 2001, the Caicos Cave Project, consisting of
Providenciales-based John Garvin and Mark Parrish and Florida-based James
Hurley, successfully mapped the cave to a depth of 255 feet (76 meters).In 2003, we returned to Cottage Pond with world-renowned karst biologist Dr. Thomas Iliffe. Working in conjunction with the TCI Department of Environment and Coastal Resources, our goal for this expedition was to study the unique biology within the various underwater cave systems around the Turks & Caicos Islands. Diving Cottage Pond is a concerted team effort and takes weeks of preparation. With help from North Caicos resident Holton Williams, we managed to transport truckloads of diving and scientific equipment right to the edge of the pond. We then transformed the usually idyllic setting into a scene resembling an explosion in a dive shop: double cylinders, stage bottles, drysuits, laptop computers, scuba equipment, scientific instrumentation and climbing gear were spread out upon a huge tarpaulin in the baking heat.  After
gearing up, it's always a relief to flop into
the cool waters of the pond. The multiple cylinders carried by each diver
become much more manageable in the water and each team member can
leisurely take the time to perform their final pre-dive checks.Mark Parrish had the most challenging scientific experiment to perform on dive one. The water of the cave is easily disturbed by the divers' exhalation bubbles. So before we all entered the water, Mark wanted to obtain a water quality profile showing the composition of the different water layers throughout the cave. Armed with a Hydro-lab Datasonde 3 water analyzer (a thin tube resembling a rocket launcher), Mark floated out to the center of the pond and lined himself roughly above the 40 foot (12 meter) long vertical crack that leads to deeper cave. (Imagine a parachutist trying to aim himself into a small chimney and you'll have an idea of what Mark felt like as he dumped the air from his buoyancy compensator and dropped like a stone into the abyss.) Holding the Hydro lab below and in front of him and trying to avoid the crumbling sidewalls of the cave, Mark quickly equalizes his ears before disappearing from view into the "mixing zone." The mixing zone is a 50 foot (15 meter) layer of foul-tasting sulphurous water, created by rotting vegetation that sinks through the freshwater lens of the pond but then bounces off the denser salt water layer like a trampoline. The debris slowly rots away, creating a nasty red soup that burns the exposed skin and tarnishes any metal on our dive equipment. Visibility immediately drops to zero. Mark is suddenly falling blind. During Mark's decent, the Hydro-lab is busy taking electronically controlled measurements from the water column showing depth, salinity, temperature, pH and oxygen content. The temperature within the mixing zone was later deemed to be in excess of 30.7 degrees C: hotter than a Jacuzzi. At a depth of 60 feet (18 meters), Mark adds air to his buoyancy compensator and slows his rapid descent. Visibility blurs as he passes from fresh water to salt water. Suddenly, the temperature drops rapidly, causing a sharp intake of breath. Mark has dropped into a layer of water that has never felt the warmth of the sun. The temperature plummets to 22 degrees C. Like a parachutist falling through a dense cloud, Mark emerges into the deep cave. He continues to fall through a vast chamber, 230 feet (70 meters) in diameter, with no sign of the bottom or walls. A wave of nitrogen narcosis sweeps through him, brought on by the rapid descent. He checks his dive computer: 140 feet (40 meters). Swinging his flashlight, Mark sees a debris mound below him: a towering pile of sediment built up over thousands of years. Mark slams on the brakes. Air screams into his buoyancy compensator. His ascent slows and he finally grinds to a halt hovering two feet above the silt. Securing the Hydro-lab, Mark checks his dive computer: his depth is 220 feet (65 meters). Through his narcosis, Mark is vaguely aware that he's reached the limit of air diving and it's time to go home. Looking up, he sees the lights from the other team members as they arrive in the higher reaches of the cave. Flakes of rock loosened by their bubbles gently float toward him like a midnight snowstorm. For a split second, the enormity and beauty of the cavern can be clearly seen. It's a sight few people ever get to appreciate. Tom, James and I pass Mark as he makes his way back to the surface and we exchange OK signs. As Mark begins his decompression stops, James continues mapping the cave while Dr. Iliffe and I go fishing. Dr. Iliffe helped make this dive a truly memorable one for me. Remember your first ocean dives where you'd swim past many interesting things without seeing or realizing what they were? Tom acted like a dive master and pointed out many things I'd never noticed in this cave before. The underwater cave ecosystem is characterized by the limited availability of food resources. A unique ecosystem has still managed to evolve around this. As Tom guided me through the cave, I could see it was actually teeming with life. Tiny cyclopoid and harpacticoid copepods danced through the dark water surrounding us. But we were looking for the creature at the top of the food chain: Remipediae. Remipedes are predatory crustaceans and are efficient and fast hunters. The paddle-like legs lining their bodies allow them to perform swift, darting maneuvers and they are known to attack creatures much larger than themselves. Tom later showed us video footage of a remipede munching on a cave shrimp several times its own size. Evidence suggests that remipedes are a very ancient group of crustaceans. They occur in saltwater caves on opposite sides of the Atlantic and even Western Australia. This pattern suggests remipedes were living in caves 180 million years ago when dinosaurs were roaming the earth and the continents were all combined into one supercontinent. The fossilized remains of the earliest known remipede Tesnusocaris bear a striking resemblance to modern remipedes and are thought to be 300 million years old. Tom Illiffe is no stranger to remipedes. In 1986, he helped identify a new family of remipedes aptly named Godzilliidae while diving in the Turks & Caicos Islands. As we leveled off at a depth of 160 feet (50 meters), Tom signaled for me to open the net bag and focus my light on the cave walls. Removing several small specimen jars, Tom flushed the jars with life-supporting salt water from the deep cave. The hunt was on. "WAHHHHH!" My first thought was that Tom had suddenly experienced a full equipment malfunction. An ear splitting scream reverberated through the water and I turned to see Tom's body jerking sporadically as if in the throes of an oxygen convulsion. Removing my long hose regulator, I dart toward him offering back-up gas. Tom shooed me away grumpily and started pointing at the water below him. "OOK! 'HER'S A UDDY EDE!!!!" (or something like that) is grunted into his regulator. This is no emergency: Tom's just excited to find the first specimen he wants to bag. I squint hard to see what's causing all the excitement: a tiny remipede, 3 centimeters long, flits in and out of my dive light like a firefly. As I focus my light on the hapless creature, Tom closes in with the specimen jar. The remipede senses the approaching vibration and darts toward me, seeking refuge in my dive harness. Tom coaxes the remipede out and gently shepherds it into his jar. The lid snaps shut. "WOO-HOO!" squeaks Tom. The remipede darts around the jar desperately seeking a way out. It suddenly occurred to me that this is what it must feel like to be captured by aliens from outer space: powerful lights descending from above, scooping you up as a specimen and then disappearing into the night sky without a trace. I began to feel sorry for the little creature. After 20 minutes, all the specimen jars are filled and Tom hands me the specimen bag that I clip onto my dive harness. Tom then produces what appears to be an airport windsock. The thin mesh plankton net gets swung through the water as we ascend, scooping any smaller creatures into a collection jar at the bottom. Tom happily fishes around as we complete our decompression stops and eventually surface. Removing his mask, Tom is grinning like a child on Christmas day. He excitedly explains that we have just bagged one of the largest remipedes he has ever seen and that he can't wait to get it back to the lab for closer examination. I go to unclip the precious sample bag and my heart misses a beat. It's missing. Cottage Pond literally eats diving equipment. Over the years, the Caicos Caves Project has lost several reels, masks and dive computers inside this cave as we scrape against the walls in zero visibility. But I'd just outdone everyone by losing the sample bag containing Tom's new remipede. Just as I was about to begin my apologies, James surfaced a few feet away from us and casually handed over the lost bag. Whether I'd actually dropped it or if James had unclipped it from my harness as practical joke, he would never say. But I do know I was mightily relieved to see that bag again! In September 2004, after a year of exhaustive study by Dr. Stefan Koenemann from the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Netherlands, we finally had our verdict: The remipede sample we found that day belongs to an entirely new genus and species, found nowhere else in the world. Taken from the Greek word kalos (beautiful) and ketos (sea monster), this animal represents the fourth genus to be added to the remipede family Speleonectidae, literally the "cave swimmers." Cottage Pond may not have its legendary mermaid, but it's fitting that it should have its very own sea monster. Caicos Cave Project
Copyright 2005 Caicos Caves Project
PO Box 150 Providenciales Turks and Caicos Islands
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