Mini-Workshop Presenters

William (Bill) Huth, Ph.D., Master of Ceremonies

Pensacola, Florida

Bill Huth has a Ph.D. in economics and his research interest is in environmental and natural resource economics. He is widely published and has recently developed a model of artificial reef demand (for the USS Oriskany) that is currently a working paper at the U.S. EPA National Center for Environmental Economics and has recently been accepted for publication in the journal Marine Resource Economics. He has been an investigator on projects funded by NOAA, Florida Sea Grant, and the Florida Geological Survey. A project funded through the Florida Springs Initiative, -Y´Microbial Indicators of Water Quality in Submerged Karst Caves of Northern Florida,¡ involved water and sediment sample analysis from the Wakulla Springs cave system. His most recent research has been with U.S. Forest Service at Bower Cave in the Groveland District of Stanislaus National Forest. He is currently a professor at the University of West Florida where he was also vice president for research and dean of the graduate school.

Bill began diving in 1980 when he was an assistant professor at Northeastern University in Boston and became an accomplished wreck diver along the Northeast U.S. coast and that experience included a number of dives to the Chester Poling and the U853, a German submarine sunk of the east coast at the end of WWII. He moved to Florida in 1994 and became interested in the Floridan Aquifer and associated natural springs and started his cave training in 1996. He is currently an NSS/CDS and NACD certified Cave Diver and has received both the Abe Davis and Wakulla awards for completing over 100 cave dives (he now has nearly 500 cave dives). He is also Advanced Trimix certified by TDS and IANTD and has logged many deep cave dives in Florida caves including Diepolder, Eagles Nest, and systems in the Woodville Karst Plain. He is also currently the Science Committee Chair for the National Speleological Society/Cave Diving Section. In addition to diving, Bill is also an Airline Transport Pilot and a current Flight Instructor, airplanes and instruments, single and multiengine land. He also has a private glider pilot rating. When not working/diving he likes to mountain bike and backpack in the desert southwest.

Marbry Hardin, NSS 27221

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Caving since 1983 and cave diving since 2003. Survey projects in wet caves that were stopped at obviously going sumps led to contacting divers to push them, and eventually to start cave diving.

Has been involved in exploration and survey of caves in the Southeast, primarily Middle Tennessee. Survey of previously known caves, and many dig projects have yielded quite a bit of virgin passage. Now, focus is on systematic exploration and documentation of (fully) underwater caves in the area and also to extend local dry caves by diving terminal sumps.

Recent interests include in-cave and underwater videography, learning to scooter, and participation in highland games (big guys in kilts throwing stuff).

Paul Heinerth

Paul has been cave diving since 1971. He stated teaching diving as a full time job after graduating from the University of Florida. His first cave class was in 1979. He owned and operated Scuba West in Hudson, Florida for almost 30 years. He has just sold the store but is staying very busy teaching at all levels of instruction. His current schedule seems to rotate between cave and rebreather classes.

Paul is a veteran of many expeditions. Some of the more notable ones are: the 1982 Giant Cave Expedition in Belize with Scheck Exley, the original Wakulla Project in 1987, and Jim King's Eagle's Nest Research in 1990 and '91. Paul participated in Bill Stone's Rio Tuerto Huautla expedition in 1995 and then in 1996 Paul was part of the Jacinto Pat Project in the Dos Ojos cave system in Yucatan. 1998/99 found Paul busy with the Wakulla2 project. In 2000 he was off again with Jill to explore and map "The Pit" in the Dos Ojos cave system where he had previously found the deep section. A documentary resulted from the "Ice Island" Antartica project in 2001. Another documentary that Paul worked on was the first "Water's Journey" DVD in 2002 with Karst Production. A year later, he was off to South Africa on the first successful dive and penetration of the wreck of the OCEANOS, laying in 300 ft. of rough waters. A suspenseful and well made DVD of that dive was produced in South Africa. In 2004, even though it was not an expedition it felt like one, Paul was a safety diver for the major production movie "CAVE".

Paul has found many new caves in Florida, Tennessee, Antartica, Belize, Mexico and the Bahamas. His best find in Florida is the small system he named "Twin Dee's" just behind Weeki Wachee back in 1973. In Belize, during 1979, it is "Giant Cave" resting beneath Caye Caulker.

Lamar Hires

Open water certified in 1979, Lamar and a friend began driving from their home in Jacksonville to north central Florida to explore the springs (and look for girls). Without proper training or equipment, they began diving Peacock Springs, Little River Springs and any spring they could find in Ned Deloach's "Underwater Guide to Florida". Too poor to think about paying an instructor, Lamar and his dive buddy stopped for air fills at Aquifer Dive Center in Jacksonville one afternoon. There they met an instructor named Wes Skiles, who topped off their tanks and asked them where they were going.

"We were too naive to know any better. We told Wes we were diving Peacock and he immediately became worried," Lamar explains, "he said we had to get training and we shrugged him off. We didn't have money for training. Then he tried to give us a copy of Sheck Exley's "Blueprint for Survival". I shrugged that off, too. I didn't have the $4 to pay for the book."

Instead, Wes gave them Sheck's guidebook and as Lamar began reading it he realized they HAD to get cave trained. They returned a few weeks later and Wes not only certified Lamar, but also gained a newfound dive partner. Lamar and his buddy continued checking out all the springs in the guidebook hoping to find something that had been overlooked. They had heard about Rock Bluff and when they discovered it was walled out at a tight restriction, they began digging. Lamar brought Wes back and together they surveyed the system and pushed it another 1400 feet.

Lamar went on to become a modern day explorer and dive pioneer. He has spent over twenty five years exploring and surveying the extensive underwater cave systems near his home in north central Florida. A legend among Florida cave divers, Lamar is known for his expertise in sidemount diving. He developed the very first training guidelines for sidemounting and has taught many of today's well-known sidemount divers.

Underwater exploration, education and conservation are a passion that has led Lamar all over the world. He has mapped and explored cave systems from the rugged mountains of Japan to the remote jungles of the Dominican Republic. Not a stranger to the ocean, Lamar's curiosity for exploration has taken him to the rarely dived icy waters of the Antarctic as well as countless wreck dives off the coasts of Florida and the eastern United States.

When Lamar began diving in 1979, exploration-quality dive equipment was not commercially available. At that time, technical divers made their own gear, fashioning backplates out of metal stop signs and sealing flashlights in plastic bags. In 1984, Lamar joined a start-up dive equipment company called "Dive Rite" and there he helped bring to market the first buoyancy compensator for double tanks known as the "Classic Wing." Dive Rite also mass produced the first metal backplate and invented the "Bridge," which was the industry's first user programmable Nitrox- dive computer. In 1997, Lamar bought Dive Rite and has grown the company into a worldwide dive manufacturer with distribution in over forty-five countries. Today, Lamar continues as CEO, product development guru and top dive guy; leading a company of dedicated divers who share Lamar's passion for developing state-of-the-art dive gear for fellow divers.

Affiliations & Awards

IANTD Board of Advisors (current)
National Speleological Society, Chairman (1992-1994)
National Speleological Society, Training Chairman (1987-1992)
International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery (IUCRR) Training Coordinator (current)
National Speleological Society, Lifetime Fellow Award
Florida Springs Exploration Award, 2000
Contributing writer for Advanced Diver Magazine, Divers Magazine, Scuba Times and Sport Diver Magazine
Contributing author NSS-CDS Cave Diving Manual and IANTD Technical Divers Encyclopedia
Instructor: IANTD, NSS-CDS, SDI, TDI

Systems Mapped

1982 Rock Bluff, Florida
1984 Devil's Ear, Florida
1985 Siphon Creek Rise Spring, Florida
1985 Bonnet Springs, Florida
1986 Little River, Florida
1986 Section 26, Alabama
1986 Cow Springs, Florida
1989 Suwanacoochee/Edwards, Florida
1989 Telford/Luraville Springs, Florida
1990 Silver Glen, Florida
1994 Blue Springs, Tennessee
1995 Akka, Shigawatari, Ryusendo Caves, Japan

Jim Stevenson

Jim Stevenson retired as a senior biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection in 2003. Jim began his career with the Department as a park ranger while attending the University of South Florida. He served as Chief Biologist for the Florida State Park System for 20 years during which time he developed the educational and the land management programs for the state park system.

Jim organized and coordinates spring basin interagency working groups for Wakulla Springs and Ichetucknee Springs.

He was Chairman of the Florida Springs Task Force that developed a protection strategy for Florida's springs and he was Director of the Governor's Florida Springs Initiative that implemented springs protection projects.

In recognition of his dedication to the protection of Florida's springs, the State of Florida named a spring on the Suwannee River "Stevenson Spring" in his honor.

And for his longstanding stewardship of Florida's public lands, the Governor and Cabinet dedicated the Department of Environmental Protection's highest award the "Jim Stevenson Resource Manager of the Year Award" that is given annually to the most deserving state lands manager.

Jim and his wife kayak the whitewater rivers of the US and dive the caves of Florida's springs.

Brian Williams, NSS 43870

Martinsville, Virginia

Caver / Sump diver.

Involved in exploration, survey, photography and conservation projects.

Experienced in both dry and underwater cave exploration and survey, vertical caving, sump diving, cave guide and photography. Has contributed on cave projects in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, New Mexico.

Exploration and Mapping Projects

Cathedral / Falmouth re-survey, Mammoth /Roppel Sump Exploration, Knights Sink, Cave of the Madonna, Busted Well, 5-Hole, Old Bellamy Cave System, Robinson Spring Resurgence, Snail Shell Cave, Windy River Cave, Steger's Fissure, Maxwellton, GGC, Natural Bridge Caverns...and many others I'd probably rather forget

Certifications

Full Cave, Nitrox and Rescue Diver. CPR for the Professional Rescuer, First Responder, NCRC Cave Rescue, Vertical Rope Techniques, HAZMAT level III

Organizations

The National Speleological Society, Blue Ridge Grotto
The Florida Speleological Society, Cave Diving Section of the NSS,
National Association for Cave Diving, Southeastern Cave Conservancy.
Florida Cave Survey (founding member), Georgia Cave Survey
West Virginia Association for Cave Studies, Tennessee Cave Survey
Alabama Cave Survey, Virginia Speleological Survey

Forrest Wilson

Forrest majored in Physics and minored in computer science at Loyola University. Forrest currently serves as the Head of technology for a school system science center in Atlanta, GA. Forrest first began caving and scuba diving in the late 1950s, and then went on to combine these two passions when he took up cave diving in 1969. Forrest is best known as an early cave diving gear manufacturer and the designer of many pieces of gear used today, most notably the Wilson Line Arrow. Forrest served the Cave Diving Section of the NSS as first NSS-CDS Training Director/Chairman, and currently holds the position of vice-chairman. Over the years Forrest has been actively cave diving in nearly a dozen states, and several countries. Forrest is responsible for the initial exploration and surveying of sumps in 5 different states.