The Nation - News from June 20, 1988

Four divers claimed records for the longest and deepest traverses of an underwater cave system after emerging from an 8,440-foot limestone tunnel near where a companion died in a preliminary dive. They had spent more than an hour breathing specially blended gases to decompress from the journey that took them 240 feet beneath the surface of Leon and Wakulla counties south of Tallahassee, Fla. Aimed at mapping the 40-million-year-old Sullivan Sink tunnels, collecting rock samples and studying the caves’ geologic structures, the expedition could find evidence linking the caves to underwater rivers that flow into the Gulf of Mexico about 20 miles south.