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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Supramonte Karst Project - Utopia expedition 2019
The Utopia exploration project is an ongoing and outstanding project that enables new findings and insights in different disciplines. To our knowledge, it is the first time in history that a cave dive of this dimension was performed with a complete team of divers, archeologists, speleologists, filmmaker, physicians and scientific decompression researchers actively involved in the preparations and the dive.
In July 2019, Toddy Wälde performed an exploration cave dive in the Utopia cave of the Supramonte Karst System in Sardinia. It was one of the longest single entry cave dives with 5 km penetration depth, a complex multilevel dive profile with a maximum depth of 125 m and duration of 11 hours. To prepare the diver optimally for this extreme exposition, he was preconditioned and treated with several known and experimental methods before, during and after the dive. At the end of the dive, Toddy surfaced healthy and in good condition without any complications.
To enable this exploration with the maximum of safety, the planning, preparation and realization of this project was challenging. Several aspects had to be considered for such a long and difficult dive. Beside the technical and logistical issues, we had to focus on medical and physiological problems associated with such a dive profile. Since only the first part of the dive profile was known, the decompression plan had to consider many variables to get the diver back safely. Moreover, profound pulmonary, circulatory and cardiac changes are induced by immersion in water. The diver had to tolerate and compensate for changes in pressure, temperature, nutrition and fatigue for many hours and diving at night. Finally, the diver’s lung and central nervous system had to cope with the intermittent high oxygen partial pressure for hours and the enormous oxygen body toxicity.
Therefore, Toddy’s fitness and health status was thoroughly examined at the University Clinic Innsbruck (Austria) before the push dive. We performed inertgas diffusion gas analyses, special exercise physiologic testings and many more examinations and evaluations of all the above described organ systems. The University Clinic Innsbruck and the departments of emergency medicine, radiology, cardiology, pulmonology, exercise physiology and the olympic athletes institute are supporting this project with special diagnostics and professional recommendations.
Cave profile, decompression
This cave system has a multilevel profile with several deep pitches and very shallow segments. Therefore, this dive is much more complex and requires different management. Based on the latest findings in decompression research, we modified and used different settings of gradient factors in the different depth segments, the adaption of M-values, ascent rates, oxygen stops before the shallow segments, adaption of setpoints, gas switches and many more. Especially the adaption of setpoint and mixture of breathing gas was a compromise between rapid decompression and oxygen toxicity. Other strategies such as OPT (oxygen precondition time) before the descend were performed to minimize microbubble formation and to possibly reduce AHS (active hydrophobic spots). Also, days before the dive we started the pretreatment of Toddy with several medications to improve his antioxidative system and to increase the seizure threshold.
After exiting the cave, most of the decompression obligations were spend in a mobile habitat. During this time, Toddy was breathing intermittently very high oxygen partial pressures alternated with gas breaks with a special CPAP face mask for better ventilation and improved gas exchange. He was also treated with infusions and medications and decompression was monitored live with ultrasound. After a total dive time of about 11 h instead of calculated 15 h Toddy surfaced without any problems.
Because of the pandemic, the Utopia project was put on hold. But in summer 2022 the preparations for the next push dive in 2023 has already started. We are excited to continue with this compelling project as a team and are looking forward to next summer when we can put together our knowledge for a new adventure.
Lebe den Traum! Wahnsinns-Leistung!
Der Olli macht echt geile Filme! 😉
Einsamer kann man auf dieser Welt nicht sein. So empfinde ich es auch immer, in Höhlen.
Spannend, interessant, einfach klasse. Wirklich ein toller Film und ein geniales Projekt 👍👍
Hallo Jan, vielen Dank für Deine Worte und ja so ist das Gefühl bei meinen Push Dives einsamer geht es wohl kaum. Besonderen Dank gilt an der Stelle an mein gesamtes Team ohne sie wäre diese Art der Exploration nicht möglich gewesen und mein Kameramann Oliver Schöll der sich selbst übertroffen hat und wirklich hochbegabt ist.
@@Toddyprotec Auch wenn ich kein Gerätetaucher bin und meine Höhlentauchgänge alle in Apnoe mache, kann ich mir doch vorstellen, was für ein immenser Aufwand und welches knowhow hinter Deinem überragenden Projekt steht. Du bist echt ein klasse Taucher und hast ein wahnsinns-Team. Der Arzt, Dein Filmemacher… Ihr seid alle tolle Profis. Respekt!!! Ganz ehrlich, das ist das beeindruckendste Tauchprojekt und die beste filmerische Doku über ein solches Projekt, das ich je gesehen habe.👍👍👍
@@jannickniederlande8020 Hallo Jan vielen Dank für Deine tollen Worte das freut mich sehr das die Doku Dir gefällt und das Du in Apnoea in Höhlen tauchst ist ebenfalls beeindruckend hab Deine Videos gesehen und da ich die Gefahren sehr gut kenne weiss ich was Du da leistet das ist schon Irre und hast meinen vollen Respekt dafür und die Videos schauen sich echt an wie Thriller...Wahnsinn 🙂
Wow, danke für das Lob😃👍👍👍
I take my hat off to you guys, you guys are great, I have a lot of respect for your work, thanks for a great film.
Thank you very much Alexander i have an outstanding team and experts around me to support me in this unique project
@@Toddyprotec Thorsten, I envy you for good, you have assembled and united an excellent team and this is very important for such serious dives as yours, while I am doing my research alone, I will be glad to exchange experiences. For 5 years I have been actively developing methods for sidemount dual rebreathing, in cave diving, if you are interested, write, I will be happy to share my experience. Good luck to you.
@@alexanderilbitskiy2972 Hello Alexander, thank you and right the team is just very good and i am lucky working with so experienced people around me and you never stop learning something new. I am diving many years dual ccr systems and would be great to exchange ideas and techniques, the best way would be stay from now on in contact via email and we can share knowledge between each other, just search for protecsardinia.com and you find my email contact. Happy new year by the way 🙂
Hey, it was really great to see this, I was involved in early cave diving in Sardinia in Su Ventu, Su Cologone, Sa Oche in Sardinia in the early 1980's so any cave diving in Sardinia is extremely interesting to me. Of course our diving was much more rudimentary than the modern techniques that allow you to venture so far. Is there a write up or survey of Utopia, I would love to see where it is heading, where its source is and how far you have explored?
Hi Steve, awesome to hear you was involved in such great cave systems in the early 80ts wow and great you contact me i am very glad to hear from you. Yes i can imagine it was different then this days i start late 90´s with cave diving so I can imagine how it was early 80´s. There are informations on my website at Protec Sardinia about this project and as well a map from the cave please see under this link: protecsardinia.com/skep/?lang=en
but so far just in german language, but Dr. Frank Hartig is writing already some articles in famous medic journals.